An appeal to the women of the nominally free states, issued by an Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women. Held by adjournments from the 9th to the 12th of May, 1837

AN

APPEAL TO THE WOMEN

OF THE

NOMINALLY FREE STATES,

ISSUED BY AN

ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION

OF

AMERICAN WOMEN.

Held by adjournments from the Qth to the 12th of -May, 1837.

We are thy sisters. — God has truly said,

That of one blood the nations He has made.

Oh, Christian woman! in a Christian land, - <;:

Canst thou unblushing lead this great command .'

Suffer the wrongs which wring our inmost heart,

To draw one throb of pity on thy part ! ,

Our skins may differ, but from thee we claim

A sister's privilege, and a sister's name. — Sarah Fortcn.

■tt

/

scccnti 2£"Dftfon.

BOSTON:
PUBLISHED BY ISAAC KNAPP,

25 CORNHILL.
1S3S.

Marden & Kimball, Pr4nters,
JV*<?. 3 School Street.

APPEAL
TO THE WOMEN

OF THE
NOMIiNALLY FREE STATES.

"Tlie trembling earth, the low mtftmurinor thunders, already aflmonish us of ouf
danger; and if females can exert any saving influence in this emergency, it us timejor
them to awake." — Cathari:«e £. Bekcher.

Beloved Sisters —

The wrongs of outraged millions, and the foreshadows

• 1 1

of coming judgments, constrain us, under a solemn sense

of responsibility, to press upon your consideration the
subject of American Slavery. The women of the North
have high and holy duties to perform in the work of
emancipation — duties to themselves, to the suffering
slave, to the slaveholder, to the church, to their country,
and to the world at large ; and, above all, to their God.
Duties which, if not performed now, may never be per-
formed at all.

Multitudes will doubtless deem such an address ill-
timed and ill-directed. Many regard the excitement pro-
duced by the agitation of this subject as an evidence of
the impolicy of free discussion, and a sufficient excuse
for their own inactivity. Others so undervalue the rights
and responsibilities of woman, as to scoff and gainsay
whenever she goes forth to duties beyond the parlor and
the nursery. The cry of such is, that the agitation of
this subject has rolled back the cause of emancipation 50
or 100, or it may be 200 years, and that this is a j^olitical
subject with which women have nothing to do. To the
first, we would reply, that the people of the South are
the best judges of the effects of Anti-slavery discussions
upon their favorite " domestic institution ;" and the uni-
versal alarm which has spread through the slave States,
is conclusive evidence of their conviction that slavery

4 APPEAL.

cannot survive discussion. They know full well, that this
terrific Upas must fall when the axe of free discussion is
laid at its root. " From how many statesmen at the South
has not the confession been extorted — extorted by the
remorse and fear which they could neither dissipate nor
conceal — that the infamy with which they are already
branded by all the philanthropists of Christendom, ivas
J'ast becoming insupportable ! The plunder of our goods
we do not dread, they exclaim ; but what is more to be
deprecated, the loss of character. What can our goods be
worth, ivhile ice are constrained to bear the scorn and exe-
cration of the civilized world, as a nest of pirate si ^'' A sim-
ilar sentiment was uttered by John C. Calhoun, in speak-
ing of his Southern opponents, in the session of Congress
1835, in the Senate. " Do they expect the Abolitionists
will resort to arms, and commence a crusade to liberate
our slaves by force .'' Is this what they mean when they
speak of the attempt to abolish slavery .'' If so, let me
tell our friends of the South who differ from us, that the
war which the Abolitionists wage against us, is of a very
different character, and far more effective ; it is
waged not against our lives, but our character.'' Gen.
Duff Green, the Editor of the United States Telegraph,
and the great champion of "Southern ri<rhts," has ex-
pressed the same views : " We believe we have most to
fear from the organized action upon the consciences and
fear of the slaveholders themselves, from the insinuation of
their (abolitionists) dangerous heresies into our schools,
our pulpits, and our domestic circles. It is only by
alarming the consciences of the weak and feeble, and
diffusing among our own people a morbid scnsibiiitij on
the question of slavery, that the abolitionists can accom-
plish their object."

Here then is the unequivocal testimony of Southerners
as to what they expect to be the influence of free discus-
sion. Has this expectation been realized } Has the
conscience of the slaveholder been reached .'' In answer
to these enquiries, we quote from a work recently pub-
lished by James Smylie, a Presbyterian minister of the
Amite Presbytery, " From his intercourse with religious
societies of «// denominations in Mississippi and Louisiana

VA

Ar?EAL, ^

he was aware that the abolition maxim, viz : that slavery
is in ilself sinful, had gained on and entwined ilsclf among
the religi&iis and conscicniious scruples of many in the com-
munity so far as to render them unhappy. The eye of
Ihe mind, resting on slavery itself as a corrupt fountain,
from which) of necessity, nothing bid corrupt streams could
flow, was incessantly employed in search of some plan by
which, with safety, tiie fountain could, in some future
tim.e, be e;mre/^ dried up." An illustration of this im-
portant acknowledgment, will be found in the following
fact, extracted from the Herald of Fi'eedom : '*A young
gentleman who has been residing in S. Carolina says, our
movements (abolitionists) are producing the best etiects
upon the South, rousing the consciences <f shiveholders,
while the slaves seesn to be impressed as a body with the
idea that help is coining — that an interest is felt for
Ihem, and plans devising- for their, relief somewhere —
which keeps them quiet. He says it is not uncommon
for ministers and good people to make confession like
this. One, riding witr, him broke forth, ' O, I fear that
the groans and wails iVom our slaves enter into the ear
of the Lord of Sabaotii. I am distressed on this subject:
my conscience v/ill let me have no peace. I go to bed, but
not to sleep. I walk my room in agony, and resolve that
1 will never hold slaves another dav ; but in the morninsT
my heart, like Pharaoh's, is hardened.'

"And there are others who have liberated their slaves
to the number of 500 or 600. Others, again, are weep-
ing in secret places over the abominations of slavery, and
praying for the success of our efforts. These things we
have learned from Southern lips, and Southern pens. Let
them stimulate us to unremitted efibrt to ' deliver him that
is spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor, lest the fury
of the Lord go out like fire, and buiTi that none can
quench it, because of the evil of our doings ' as a nation."

To the second objection, that slavery is a political
question, we would say : every citizen should feel an in-
tense interest in the political concerns of the country, be-
cause the honor, happiness, and well-being of every class,
are bound up in its politics, government and laws. Are
v»c aliens because we are women ? Are we bereft of citi-
1*

6 APPEAL.

zenship because we are the mothers, wives, and daughters
of a mighty people ? Have women no country — no in-
terest staked in public weal — no liabilities in common
peril — no partnership in a nation's guilt and shame ? — -
Has woman no home nor household altars, nor endearing
ties of kindred, nor sway with man, nor power at a mer-
cy seat, nor voice to cheer, nor hand to raise the droop-
\ing and to bind the broken ?

But before we can appreciate the bearings of this sub-
ject, and our duties with regard to it, we must first know
what slavery is ; and then trace out its manifold and
monstrous relations. We can thus discover whether wo-
men have any duties to discharge in its abolition. We
will then attempt to show why Northern women should
labor for its overthrow, and lastly now they can aid in
this work of faith, and labor of love.

What then is slavery ? It is that crime which casts
man down from that exaltation where God has placed
him, " a little lower than the angels," and sinks him to a
level with the beasts of the field. This intelligent and
immortal being is confounded with the brutes that perish ;
he whose spirit was formed to rise in asj)irations of grati-
tude and praise whilst here, and to spend an eternity with
God in heaven, is herded with the beasts, whose spirits
go downward with their bodies of clay to the dust of
which they were made. Slavery is that crime by which
man is robbed oT his inalienable right to liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness, the diadem of glory and honor with
which he was crowned, and that sceptre of dominion which
was placed in his hand when he was ushered upon the
theatre of creation, and was divinely commissioned to
" have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the
fowls of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth,
and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
Slavery throws confusion into the ariangements of Infi-
nite Wisdom, breaks up the divine harmony, and tears up
the very foundations of human society. It produces a
state of things at war with nature, and hence those unnat-
ural expedients to preserve this system t'rom destruction;
hence the severity of those laws which disgrace the stat-
ute books of ouj" Southern States. A compend of these

APPEAL. 7

was published in 1827, by Judge Stroud of Philadelphia,
and to this work we would refer our sisters for a full and
correct exposition of American slavery. Let us first hear
what a slave is according to the laws of South Carolina.
" Slaves shall be deemed, taken and reputed and adjudg-
ed in law to be chattels personal in the hands of their mas-
ters, owners, and possessors, and their executors, admin-
istrators and assigns, to all intents, constructions and pur-
poses whatsoever." As ** chattels personal, '^ they are held
in 12 of the Southern States, but in Louisiana they are
held as real estate. Her law runs thus : " Slaves shall
always be reputed and considered as real estate, shall be
as such subject to be mortgaged according to the rules
prescribed by law, and they shall be seized and sold as
real estate.''^ She further says "A slave is one who is in
the power of the master to whom he belongs. The mas-
ter may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry, and
his labor ; he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor ac-
quire any thing but what must belong to his master." In
the one case he is held as bank stock, or the shares in a
rail-road company, in the other as houses or lands. In
both he is equally liable to be seized at any time, and
sold for the debts of a living or deceased master. These
definitionsof a slave, then, plainly declare, " that the slave
is not to be ranked among sentient beings, but among things
is an article of property, a chattel personal." The
code therefore which has been framed to keep this ration-
al being on a level with the brutes, this sentient creature
on an equality with inanimate objects, must necessarily
be terribly severe, a permanent index to the hearts of
those who framed it, and those who, although invested
with the power, refuse to abrogate it. The toliowing car-
rolleries are amply sustained by the language of the
slave codes themselves :

I. Man, created in the image of God, is reduced to a
thing.

II. Man is robbed of his " inalienable right to liberty,"
and is held in perpetual captivity.

III. Man can own no property, and is daily plundered
of the fruits of his toil. Says God, " The laborer is worthy
of his hire :" says the slaveholder, " i will yoke him
with the brutes, and he shall toil for me."

8 APPEAL,

IV. Man "can make no contract." God has eslab=
lished the marriage relation; and Christ has said, "What
therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asun-
der." The slaveholder denies the right, and forbids to
marry. JVot a single slave in the United States is legally
manned^ The nominal marriages which they contract
may be broken at any time by the master, and are contin-
ually and most cruelly sundered every day. Look, then,
at the awful state of concubinage to which two millions
and a quarter of our citizens are reduced, by the statute
laws of our land.

V. Man is denied the benefits of education, and com-
pelled to disobey the divine command to "search the
Scriptures :" they are a sealed book to him ^-^ sealed by
the express provisions of the legal code of the South.

VI. Man is required to yield unqualified submission to
his fellow man — ay, and woman, too, is bound to submit,
and become the uncortsenting victim of unspeakable in-
dignities. Resistance may be punished with death.
^VII. Man is threwn entirely out of the protection of
law : the murder of the slave is leo-alized in four ditferent
ways ; and the same laws which reduce him to the con-
dition of the brute, and deny him legal protection, punish
him with unparalleled severity. In Virginia, there are
seventy-one offences for which the slave may suffer death,
and thirty-six in South Carolina. In all these cases, we
must remember he is denied the right of a presentation
by a grand jury, and a trial by a petit jury — r-and this, too,
in direct violation of the Constitution of the United States.

VIII. Man is deprived of all hope of redemption from
this horrible condition, either for himself, his wife, or his
children. Slavery is to be (according to the slave laws)
" hereditary and perpetual."

Here, then, is a faint description of American slavery.
This is the republican despotism under which the slaves
of our country are groaning out a life of ignorance, deg-
radation, and anguish. Let every American citizen
ponder this question, which bears with momentous power
on the destinies of our country, whether we regard it in
a political, a moral, or a religious point of view.

APPEAL.

SLAVERY A POLITICAL SUBJECT.

I. Let US first look at it as a political subject. Such
incongruous elements as freedom and slavery, republican-
ism and despotism, cannot long exist together; the unnat-
ural and unhallowed union between these things must
sooner or later be broken. Not only are one-sixth part of
the inhabitants of this republic held in abject slavery, but
the free and the slave States are unequally yoked togeth-
er — they do not enjoy equal privileges. In the former,
persons only are represented in our National Congress;
in the latter, proptrlif as well as persons send their repre-
sentatives there. The slaveholding and non-slaveholding
States have antagonist interests, which are continually
conflicting, and producing jealousies and heart-burnings
between the contending parties. Our Congressional de-
bates have presented one unvaried scene of unreasonable
demands and haughty threats on the one hand — of tame
compromise, and unmanly, and in many cases most unprin-
cipled submission on the other. Slavery not only robs the
slave of all his rights as a man in thirteen of the States
of this Confederacy, but it vaults over the barrier of Ma-
son's and Dixon's line, swims the Ohio and the Potomac,
and bribes Northern citizens to kidnap and enslave free-
men of the North — drags them into hopeless bondage,
and sells them under the hammer of the auctioneer.
Not only so — it outlaws every Northerner who openly
avows the sentiments of the Declaration of our Independ-
ence, and destroys the free communication of our senti-
ments through the medium of the mail, so that the dauo-h-
ters of America cannot now send the productions of their
pen to the parent who resides'in a slaveholding State. It
threatens even our Representatives in Congress with as-
sassination, if they dare to open their lips in defence of
the rights of the oppressed and the dumb — tramples in
the dust the right of petition, when exercised by free men
and free women — brands them with the opprobrious epi-
thets of ** white slaves" and " devils," and rides triumph-
ant over the bowed heads of the senators and representa-
tives of our free States. Slavery nurses within the bosom
of our country her deadliest foes, and threatens to bring

i(J A?FEAt.

down the *' exterminating thunders " of divine vengeance
upon our guilty heads. "The dark spirit of slavery "
rules in our national councils, and menaces the severance
of the bonds which bind together these United States,
and to shake from our star-spangled banner, as with a
mighty wind, those glittering emblems of our country's
pre-eminence among the nations of the earth, and to burn
our Declaration as a " splendid absurdity," a *' rhetorical
flourish ;" to offer the glorious charter of oar constitU"
tional liberties and alliance upon the same altar — to the
horns of which the bleeding slave is now bound by the
chain of his servitude, and the colored freeman by "the
cord of caste."

This is a very imperfect outline of the political bear-
ings of this great question ; and it is gravely urged,, that
as it is a jjolitical subject^ ti^omen have no concernment
with it : this doctrine of the North is a sycophantic re-
sponse to the declaration of a Southern representative,
that women have no right to send up petitions to Congress.
We know, dear sisters, that the open and the secret ene-
mies of freedom in our country have dreaded our influ-
ence, and therefore have reprobated our interference "and
in order to blind us to our responsibilities, have thrown
dust into our eyes, well knowing that if the organ of vis-
ion is only clear,, the whole body the moving and acting
faculties will become full of light, and will soon be thrown
into powerful action. Some, who pretend to be very jeal*
ous for the honor of our sex, and are very anxious that
tve should scrupulously maintain the dignity and delicacy
of female propriety, continually urge this objection to
female effort. We grant that it is a political, as well as
a moral subject : does this exonerate women from their
duties as subjects of the government, as members of the
great human family .'' I lave women never wisely and
laudably exercised political responsibilities ^

When the Lord led out his chosen people like a flock
into the wilderness, from the house of bondage, was it
not a WOMAN whom He sent before them with Moses and
Aaron ? Did she not lead her manumitted sisters in that
sublime peon of thanksgiving and praise which ascended
from their grateful hearts as they answered the chorus of

APPEAL. 1 1

the'ir brethren with the inspired words, "Sing ye to the
Lord, lor he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his
rider hath ho thrown into the sea." And was not the de-
liverance of Israel froin Egyptian bondage a/Jo/j7ic«/ con-
cern'^ Did it not shake the throne of the Pharaohs,
desolate the land of Eg} pt, and strike terror into the
stubborn hearts of subtle politicians. Miriam then inter-
fered with the pblitical concerns of Egypt ; and we doubt
not, had the monarch been permitted to lay his hand upon
the sister of Moses, she would have suffered as a leader
in this daring attempt to lead out her sisters from the
house of bondage. Would not her fate have been simi-
lar to that of the heroine of the fifteenth century .'

When Barak received the divine command to go down
to Mount Tabor, and the promise that with ten thousand
men he should overcome the hosts of Sisera with their
iron chariots, to whom did he appeal in those memorable
words — " U tJiou wilt go with me, then I will go ; but if
thou wilt not go with me, then 1 will not go r" It v.as to
Deborah ; and this ivomRU intermeddled- so. far with the
poUiical concerns of Israel, as to go up with him to the
battle ; and when, as she predicted, Sisera was sold into
the hands of a woman, she united with Barak in a song
of triumphant praise, that the ancient Kishon had swept
down in the current of its waters the lifeless bodies of
the Canaanitish warriors.

But many seem to think, that although women may
have been called to the performance of extraordinary du-
ties in the days of miracle and of inspiration, that under
no other circumstances could such conduct have been
warranted. Let us turn, then, to the history of Rome,
When Coriolanus, who had been banished by the Romaa
Senate, returned with a host of barbarians, to wreak his
vengeance upon the proud mistress of the world, and after
the embassies of senators, and priests, and augurs, had
failed to move his unrelenting heart, who were sent out
to try the magic power of their tears and prayere ? ^\ ere
they not the wife and inothcr of the Roman warrior, and
were they not followed by a train of matrons, who ap-
proached the Volsciancamp to plead their country's cause .^
And what was the success of this embassage of mercy

1*2 APPEAL.

and of love ? The hero's icy heart was melted by the
tears and pleadings of these feebler ones : he bowed his
stubborn will to theirs, turned back his disappointed free-
booters from the gates of Rome, and sent these women
home with the glad tidings of peace upon their trembling
lips.

But perhaps the sage objector may say, "True ; but
these women were delegated by the Roman Senate — ihey
were vested with authority by 'the powers that be' —
ihey did not rush uncalled into the field of action." Was
this, then, iheir commission tor intermeddling with the
political concei'ns of their country } Where, then, was
the commission of those Sabine women, who threw them-
selves between the hostile armies, when they were just
about plunging their javelins into the hearts of their own
fathers, brothers, and sons ? Were ihey deputed by the
Roman Senate.^ No! they held higher credentials. The
angel of mercy commissioned them each to do and to dare
all that might become a woman, in such a fearful hour of
agony and boding. They rushed between the embattled
hosts. At the sight of their tears and prayers, the iron
grasp relaxed — the weapons fell — and they who met in
hate to kill, embraced in love, and thenceforth mingled
into one. These icomen poured the assuasive oil over
the troubled waters of strife. Woman became the hefiler
of breaches — the restorer of paths to dwell in.

But are these the doings of olden time alone ^ are there
no instances of woman's " interference " in modern his-
tory .'' About the middle of the fifteenth century, when
the kingdom of France had fallen, and the infant monarch
of England had placed her crown upon his youthful head,
lo! a woman arose as the deliverer of \mv country. She
led on the broken spirited troops of France to the siege
of Orleans, li'28 — compelled the English to surrender —
conducted Charles the Seventh to the city of Rheims. —
witnessed the coronation of the astonished prince — and
then retired from the plaudits of a grateful nation, who
hailed the deliverance she had wrought as almost miracu-
lous. And who was this Joan of Arc ? An uneducated
country girl, who stepped so far beyond the sphere of her
humble duties, as the servant of a tavern-keeper, as to

APPEAL. 13

V

intermeddle with the 'political concerns of one of the great-
est kingdoms of Europe. What wonderful presumption !
No marvel, then, that she suffered the penalty of her
strange temerity, being burned alive as a witch, by the
English, in the town of Rouen.

But let us turn over the pages of our own history. When
the British army had taken possession of our beautiful
city of brotherly love, who arose at midnight to listen to
the plots which were laid in an upper chamber, by Gene-
ral Howe in his council of war f It was a woman: and
when she stole the secret from their unconscious lips, she
kept it locked within her own bosom, until under an inge-
nious pretext she repaired to Frankford, gained an inter-
view with Washington, and disclosed to him the important
intelligence which saved the lives of her countrymen.
Did Lydia Darrah confer a benefit upon the American
army — did she perform the duties of an American citizen.''
Or, was this act . an impertinent intermeddling with the
political concerns of her country, with which, as a ivoman^
she had nothing to do ? Let the daughters of this re-
public answer the question.*

It is related of Buonaparte, that he one day rebuked a
French lady for busying herself with politics. "Sire,"
replied she, " in a country where women are put to death,
it is very, natural i^oi women should wish to know the
reason why." And, dear sisters, in a country where
women are degraded and *brutalized, and where their
exposed persons bleed under the lash — where they are
sold in the shambles of " negro brokers " — robbed of their
hard earnings — torn from their husbands, and forcibly
plundered of their virtue and their offspring; surely msuch
a country, it is very natural that women should wish to know
'•'the reason ■why'*'* — especially when these outrages of
blood and nameless horror are practiced in violation of
the principles of our national Bill of Rights and the Pre-
amble of our Constitution. W^e do not, then, and cannot
concede (he position, that because this is a political sub-

* We would here remark, that those instances of interference on the part of women
of different ages aiid countries, in the political concerns of states and kingdoms, are
NOT cited as apprubatonj of the measures they employed, but as illustrations of the
principle that women arc citizens, and that they have important duties to perform for
their country.

2

14 APPEAL.

*

ject women ought to fold their hands in idleness, and close
their eyes and ears to the " horril^le things " that are
practiced in our land. The denial of our duty to act, is a
bold denial of our right to act ; and if we have no right to
act, then may we well be termed " the white slaves of the
North " — for, like our brethren in bonds, we must seal
our lips in silence and despair.

SLAVERY A MORAL SUBJECT.

II. This, however, is not merely a potitical subject; it
is highly moral, and as such claims the attention of every
moral being. Slavery exerts a most deadly influence over
the morals of our country, not only over that portion of it
where it actually exists as "a domestic institution," but
like the miasma of some pestilential pool, it spreads its
desolating influence far beyond its own boundaries. Who
does not know that licentiousness is a crying sin at the
North as well as at the South? and W'ho does not admit
that the manners of the South in this respect have had a
wide and destructive influence on Northern character?
Can crime be fashionable and common in one part of the
Union and unrebuked by the other without corrupting the
very heart's blood of the nation, and lowering the standard
of morality everywhere ? Can Northern men go down
to the well-watered plains of the South to make their for-,
tunes, without bowing themselves in the house of Rim-
mon and drinking of the waters of that river of pollution
which rolls over the plain of Sodom and Gomorrah ? Do
they return uncontaminated to their homes, or does not
many and many a Northerner dig the grave of his virtue in
the Admahs and Zeboims of our Southern States. And
can our theological and academic institutions be opened to
the sons of the planter without endangering the puiity of
the morals of our own sons, by associations with men
who regard the robbery of the poor as no crime, and op-
pression as no wrong ? Impossible !

Then, again, the interest of the North and the South
are closely interwoven; and this circumstance has con-
tributed to blind the eyes of the North to the sin of the
slaveholder, and to steel his heart against the sufl^erings
of the helpless slave. She has learned to look with cold

APPEAL. io

indifference, if not with approbation, upon that organized
system of robbery which is dignified with the mild epithet
of "peculiar institution of the South," and to hear un-
moved those wailings of agony and despair which come
up from the sultry fields of Louisiana and Mississippi,
Alabama, and Georgia. Yes, so demoralizing has been
the influence of Southern commerce and Southern custom
of dollars and of cents, that millions in the free States
stand up on the side of the oppressor, and pour out all
the sympathies of their souls into the bosoms of those
who buy and sell and degrade and brutalize their fellow-
creatures. What further need have we of evidence that
the North has been most deeply corrupted, than the fact
that her hands are busy in daubing this idol temple with
untempered mortar, and her lips in crying peace! peace!
to the Southy when God has declared, " there is no peace
to the wicked," Look, too, at her citizens, even her min-
isters becoming slaveholders and marrying slaveholders,
instead of rebuking this presumptuous insurrection against
the rights of God and man, and refusing to be partakers in
their evil deeds. But this is not all ; our people have
erected a false standard by which to judge of men's char-
acter. Because in the slaveholding States colored men
are plundered and kept in abject ignorance, are treated
with disdain and scorn^ so here, too, in profound defer-
ence to the South, we refuse to eat, or ride, or walk, or
associate, or open our institutions of learning, or even our
zoological institutions to people of color, unless they visit
them in the capacity of servanls, of menials in humble
attendance upon the Anglo-American.* Who ever heard
of a more wicked absurdity in a Republican country ?

Have Northern women, then, nothing todo with slavery,
when its demoralizing influence is polluting their domestic
circles and blasting the fair character of their sons and
brothers? Nothing to do with slavery when their domes-
tics are often dragged by the merciless kidnapper from
the hearth of their nurseries and the arms of their little
ones.'' Nothing to do with slavery when Northern women

*The restriction to whiich we allude is contained in the following extract from the
pampljlet pulilished by the Institute. " The proprietors wish it to hf, understood, that
PEi PLE OF « oLOR orc not pernulted to enter jexiept when in ATTENOiNci; i'fjv

CKUDBES A.KO FASJII^IE*,"

16 APPEAL.

are chanied and driven like criminals, and incarcerated in
the great prison-house of the South? Nothing to do with
slavery? — but we forbear, and pass on to consider it in a
religious point of view.

SLAVERY A RELIGIOUS SUBJECT.

III. It is as a religious question that we regard it as
most important. O ! it is when we look at the effort made
by slaveholders to destroy the mind of the slave that we
fear and tremble. *vlt is," says the North Carclina Man-
umission Society, in 18^6, " the maxim of slave-masters
in common v/ith other tyrants, the more ignorance the
more safety." Hear, too, the language of Beri^ in the
Virginia House of Delegates, in 1832. "'We have, as
far as possible, closed every avenue by which light might
enter their minds. If we could extingnish the capacity to
see the light, our work would be completed; they would
be on a level with the beasts of the field, and we should
be safe. I am not certain that we would not do it, if we
could find out the necessary process — and that under the
plea of necessity." And these testimonies are corrobo-
rated by James A. Tlcme, a minister of the Gospel, of
Kentucl'.y. *' Tiie p'.antations of the South are grave-
yards of the nmid, the inexpressive countenances of the
slaves are monuments of souls expired, and their spirit-
less eyes their epitaphs." And Robert J. Breckenridge,
of Baltimore, affirms, that one feature of American slavery
is, **to deprive them of the means and opportunities of
moral and intellectual culture."

Not only are the means o^ mental improvement withheld
from the slave, but the opportunities of receiving moral
culture also. Not only is the privilege of learning to
read and write, kc. denied, but no provision is made by
law for his religious instruction, and hardly any by the
church or the master. Indeed the slaveholder possesses
legally supreme dominion over the somI of his slave. This
was admitted in 1831, by G. C. Jones, now a professor in
the Theological Seminary of Columbia, South Carolina, in
a sermon preached by him before two associations of plant-
ers in Georgia. These are his own words, — " In the ex-
ercise of that supreme power over them, vested in us by

APPEAL. 17

the laws of our couniry, we can forbid any man's coming
on our plantations for the purpose of religiously instruct-
ing them — we can forbid all meetings for religious pur-
poses on our plantations — ive can refuse to instruct them
ourselves — tee can forbid them the privileges of God's
sanctuary on the Sabbath — we can literally bar the door
of entrance into Heaven against them ,* nor is there uny
potver in our governmen! that can compel us to swerve a
hair from such treatment of them. The moral destinies
of these people are submitted to our disposal." Here
then is the despotic power with which every slaveholder
in our land is vested. We would now ask, do they exer-
cise it ? We appeal to the South for an answer. We
condemn her not by northern testimony, but out of her own
mouth. What is the condition of her slaves .'' In the same
sermon from which the above extract is taken, we find
the following : — "The description which the apostle Paul
in his epistle to the Romans gives of the heathen world,
will apply with very little abatement, to our negroes. . . .
Chastity is an exceeding rare virtue. Poligamy is com-
mon, and there is little sacredness attached to the marriage
contract. It is entered into for the most part without
established forms and is dissolved at the will of the par-
ties.* Nor is there any sacredness attached to the Sab-
bath. It is a day of idleness and sleep, of sinful amuse-
ment, of visiting and of labor. Numbers of them do not
go to church, and cannot tell who Jesus Christ is, nor
have they ever. heard so much as the ten commandments
read and'explained. Of the professors of religion among
them, there are many of questionable piety, who occa-
sion the different churches great trouble in discipline,
for they are extremely ignorant, and frequently are
guilty of the grossest vices. Generally speaking, they
appear to us to be without hope and without God in the

world. A NATIO-V OF HEATHEN IN OUR VERY MIDST.

And if we believe the testimony of our own eyes and
ears, and the testimony of those who know these people
most intimately, we must conclude that they need the
Gospel, and need it as much as any people in the
WORLD. We have been shocked at the death of 40,000

* Just as fie^^uentlv Ht the will of tyrannical masters.

2#

18 APPEAL.

men annually, by intemperance. But it is probable that
as many die annually among the negroes in slaveholding
states, whose death is equally as hopeless as that of the
drunkard, and yet we have not thought of this, neither
have we felt it. The majority do not hear the Gospel
for weeks and months together. But whenever the
negroes hear the preaching of the Gospel, they hear it
to a very great disadvantage. The sermons are almost
wholly delivered to their masters, and are not only for
the greater part inapplicable to them, but entirely above
their comprehension-, both as to language and thought.
The gospel is preached to them in an unknown tongue.
Many of them are guilty of notorious sins and know not
that they are sins at all."

We might quote more abundantly from official Southern
testimony, but these have so often been printed and re-
printed that we have purposely avoided introducing them
into this address. We feel then that the supreme power
of the master over his slaves has been put forth, not " to
compel them to come" into the gospel kingdom, but to keep
them in the lowest possible state of ignorance, degrada-
tion, and crime. Have Northern women then nothing to
do with this ''nation of heathen in our very midst?"
Shall we pour our treasures into the funds of the Foreign
Missionary Society to send the glad tidings of redeeming
love to "the isles of the Gentiles," to Russia and Greece,
to China and Burmah, and the coast of Africa, and vet sit
down in indifference to the perishing souls of our orvn coun-
trymen'? Shall we busy ourselves to send the Bible to
nations afar off, and yet neglect to do all that our hands
and lips and pens and purses can do, to induce the South
to abolish a system which forbids almost entirely the la-
bors of missionaries among one half of her population, and
altogether seals up the pages of divine inspiration to them?
Nothing to do with slavery ! O ! our sisters, some of us
feel ready to exclaim — if we forget the complicated
wrongs of our brethren and sisters in chains, let our right
hands forget their cunning ! If we remember not " them
that are in bonds as bound with them," and plead not the
cause of the dumb, let our tongues cleave to the roofs of
our mouths, if we prefer not to sufier reproach and afilic-

APPEAL. 19

tions for these outraged ones, to all the joys of worldly
power and human praise. Nothing to do with slavery !
Then we would ask, what have tve to do with the frantic
screams of that Hindoo widow who ascends the funeral pile
of her husband, and offers up her own body a living sacrifice
to the demon of superstition? What have we to do with
that Indian mother who plunges her innocent babe into
the Ganges? or with that father who, when it lifts its little
hands for help, strikes it down with the paddle of his
boat? What have ive to do with the Sumatrian who
carries his decrepit parent into the pathless woods, and
leaves him to perish with hunger and thirst? Ah ! dear
sisters, we know that as human beings and as Christians,
we are " debtors, both to the Greeks and to the Barbari-
ans" of other lands ; and are ive not much more so to the
bond and the heathen of our own ?

W^e have hitherto addressed you more as moral and re-
sponsible beings, than in the distinctive character of wo-"
men ; we have appealed to you on the broad ground of
human rights and human responsibilities, rather than on
that of your peculiar duties as women. We have pursued
this course of argument designedly, because, in order to
prove that you have any duties to perform, it is necessary
first to establish the principle of moral being — for all our
rights and all our duties grow out of this principle. M
moral beings have essentially the same rights and the same
duties, whether they be male or female. This is a truth the
world has yet to learn, though she has had the experience
of fifty-eight centuries by which to acquire the knowledge
of this fundamental axiom. Ignorance of this has involved
her in great inconsistencies, greaterrors, and great crimes,
and hurled confusion over that beautiful and harmonious
structure of human society which infinite wisdom had
established. We will now endeavor to enumerate some
reasons why we believe Northern women, as women, are
solemnly called upon to labor in the great and glorious
work of emancipation.

I. SLAVE-TRADE SANCTIONED BY A WOMAN.

We know that our country is very anxious to throw
all the blame of the origin of slavery here upon England,

!20 APPEAL.

although it is a well-established fact, tliat the first slaves
ever introduced into the colonies, were voluntarily pur-
chased by the colonists from a Dutch vessel in 1620.
Upon the head of England, however, tee pour the execra-
tions of our wrath for having brought upon us the curse of
slavery. Let us now turn over the pages of her history to
find out WHO filled her throne at the time that Captain
Hawkins was authorized to carry on the horrible traffic of
the slave trade. It was a wo3ian ! This first British pirate
on the coast of Africa, assisted by some rich persons in
London, fitted out three ships, and sailed to Africa, where
he plundered the towns and carried off three hundred
of the defenceless inhabitants to Hispaniola. This no-
ble exploit of Christian chivalry was followed by the ex-
press authority of Elizabeth, to perpetrate a series of
such depredations upon the shores of this devoted conti-
nent.* If then, a womax was the first British Sovereign
who legalized the African slave-trade, through whose in-
strumentality so many thousands of the victims of oppres-
sion have been brought to our land, then icomen are bound
to do all they can to exterminate the evil which woman
exerted her power and authority to bring upon our coun-
try and the world.

II. W03IEN THE VICTIMS OF SLAVERY.

Out of the millions of slaves who have been stolen from
Africa, a very great number must have been women who
were torn from the arms of their fathers and husbands,
brothers and children, and subjected to all the horrors of
the middle passage and the still greater sufferings of
slavery in a foreign land. Multitudes of these were cast
upon our inhospitable shores ; some of them now toil out
a life of bondage, " one hour of which is fraught with
more misery than ages of that" which our lathers rose in
rebellion to oppose. But the great mass of female slaves
in the southern States are the descendants of these hap-
less strangers; 1,000,000 of them now wear the iron
yoke of slavery in this land of boasted liberty and law.

* Perhaps it is but justice to tiie Ciueen to say, that at the very time she granted
tliis eomniissioii to Hawkins, "she expressed her concern lest any of the AJVicans
should be carried off without their free consent, declaring that such a thing would bo
detestable, and call dvwn the vengeance of Heaven upon the undertakers."

APPEAL. 21

They are our country women — therj are our sisters; and to
us, as women, they have a right to look for sympathy with
their sorrows, and effort r.nd prayer fbr their rescue.
Upon those of us especially who have named the name
of Christ, they have peculiar claims, and claims which
we must ansicer, or we shall incur a heavy load of guilt.

Women, too, are constituted by nature the peculiar
guardians of children, and children are the victims of this
horrible system. Helpless infancy is robbed of the ten-
der care of the mother and the protection of the father.
There are in this Christian land thousands of little chil-
dren who have been made orphans by the "domestic in-
stitution " of the South ; and whilst woman's hand is
stretched out to gather in the orphans and the half or-
phans whom death has made in our country, and to shel-
ter them from the storms of adversity, G let us not
forget the orphans whom crime has made in our midst;
but let us plead the cause of these innocents. Let us' ex-
pose the heinous wickedness of the internal slave-trade.
It is an organized system fcr the disruption of family ties,
a manufactory of widov/s and orphans.

III. \V03IEN ARE SLAVEHOLDERS.

Multitudes of the Southern women hold men,, wo-
men and children as property. They are pampered in
luxury, and nursed in the school of tyranny ; they sway
the iron rod of power, and they rob the laborer of his
hire. Immortal beings tremble at their nod, and bow in
abject submission at their Vvord, and under the cowskin
too often wielded by thsir own delicate hands. Women
at the South hold their own sisters and brothers in bond-
age. Start not at this dreadful assertion — we speak that
which some of us do knov/ — we testify that which some
of us have seen. Such facts ought to be known, that the
women of the North may understand their duties, and be
incited to perform Ihem.

Southern families often present the most disgusting
scenes of dissension, in which the mistress acts a part
derogatory to her own character as a woman. Jefferson
has so exactly described the bitter fruits of slavery in the
domestic circle that we cannot forbear re-quoting it :

22 APPEAL.

*'The whole commerce between master and slave is a
perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the
most unremitting despotism on the one hand, and degra-
ding submission on the other. The parent storms, the
child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts cyri
the same airs in a circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to
the worst of passions ; and thus nursed, educated and daily
exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped hy it with
odious peculiarities." We wish this picture applied only
to the "commerce between master and slave;" but we
know that there are female tyranls too, v/ho are prompt to
lay their complaints of misconduct before their husbands,
brothers and sons, and to urge them to commit acts of vio-
lence against their helpless slaves. Others still more
cruel, place the lash in the hands of some trusty domestic,
and stand by whilst he lays the heavy strokes upon the
unresisting victim, deaf to the cries for mercy which rend
the a'ir, or rather the more enraged at such appeals, which
are only answered by the Southern lady with the prompt
command of " give her more for that." This work of
chastisement is often performed by a brother, or other
relative of the poor sufferer, which circumstance stings
like an adder the very heart of the slave while her body
writhes under the lash. Other mistresses who cannot
bear that their delicate ears should be pained by the
screams of the poor sufferers, write an order to the mas-
ter of the Charleston work-house, or the New Orleans
calaboose, where they are most cruelly stretched in order
to render the stroke of the whip or the blow of the paddle
more certain to produce cuts and wounds which cause
the blood to flow at every stroke. And let it be remem-
bered that these poor creatures are often women who are
most indecently divested of their clothing and exposed to
the gaze of the executioner of a ivoman's command.

What then, our beloved sisters, must be the effects of
such a system upon the domestic character of the white
females ? Can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit } Can
such despotism mould the character of the Southern wo-
man to gentleness and love.'' or may we not fairly con-
clude that all that suavity, tor which slaveholding ladies
are so conspicuous, is in many instances the paint and

APPEAL. 23

the varnish of hypocrisy, the fashionahle polish of a
heartless superficiality ?

But it is not the character alone of the mistress that is
deeply injured by the possession and exercise of such de-
spotic power, nor is it the degradation and suffering to
which the slave is continually subject; but another impor-
tant consideration is, that in consequence of the dreadful
state of morals at the South, the wife and the daughter
sometimes find their homes a scene of the most mortifying,
heart-rending preference of the degraded domestic, or the
colored daughter of the head of the family. There are,
alas, too many families, of which the contentions of Abra-
ham's household is a fair example. But we forbear to
lift the veil of private life any higher ; let these few hints
suffice to give you some idea of what is daily passing be-
hind that curtain which has been so carefully drawn be-
fore the scenes of domestic life in Christian America.

And now, dear sisters, let us not forget that JVorfhern
women are participators in the crime of slavery — too ma-
ny of us have surrendered our hearts and hands to the
wealthy planters of the South, and gone down with them
to live on the unrequited toil of the slave. Too many
of zis have ourselves become slaveholders, our hearts have
been hardened under the searing influence of the system,
and we, too, have learned to be tyrants in the school of
despots. Too i^ew of us have replied to the matrimonial
proposals of the slaveholder :

" Go back, haughty Southron, thy treasures of gold
Are (limned by the blood of the hearts tliou hast sold ;
Thyjiome may be lovely, but round it I hear
The crack of the whip and the footsteps of fear.

Full low at thy bidding thy negroes may kneel,
With the iron of bondage on si>irit and heel;
Yet know that tlie Worlherner sooner woul<l be
In fetters with them than mfreedovi with thee."

But let it be so no longer. Let us henceforward resolve,
that the women of the free States nevei^ again will barter
their principles for the blood-bought luxuries of the South
— never again will regard with complacency, much less
with the tender sentiments of love, any man '' who build-
eth his house by unrighteousness and his chambers by

24 APPEAL.

wrong, that useth his neighbor's service without wages,
and giveth him naught for his work."

And there are others amongst us, who, though not
slaveholders ourselves, yet have those who are nearest
and dearest to us involved in this sin. Ah, yes! some of
us have fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, who are
livirtg in the slave States, and are daily served by the un-
remunerated servant; and for the enlightenment of these
tve are most solemnly bound to labor and to pray without
ceasing. Vast responsibilities are rolled upon us by the
fact that we believe we have received the truth on this
subject, whilst they are in ignorance and error. Some
Northern women too, are the wives of slaveholders, and
of those who hold mortgages on the slaves of the South.

IV. WOMEN USE THE PRODUCTS OF SLAVE LABOR.

Multitudes of Northern women are daily making use
of the products of slave labor. They are clothing them-
selves and their families in the cotton, and eating the
rice. and. ihie sugar which they well know has cost the
slave his unrequited toil, his blood and his tears ; and
if the maxim in law be founded in justice and truth, that
" the receiver is as had as the thief," how much greater
the condemnation of those who not merely receive the
stolen products of -the slave's labor, but voluntarily pur-
chase them, and cOntinuallij aj)propriate them to their own
use.

We frequently meet with individuals who, though very
particular in not using sugar which has been raiseji by
the slave, yet feel no compunction in purchasing slave-
grown cotton, and assign as a reason, that there is not
that waste of life in the culture of cotton, which attends
that of sugar. But is there less waste of blood? We copy
the following description of the whip which is made by
JVorther7i men. and used bv Southern overseers on cotton
plantations. " The staff is about 20 or 22 inches in
length, with a large and heavy head, which is often load-
ed with a quarter or half a pound of lead, wrapped in
catgut, and securely fastened on, so that nothing but the
greatest violence can separate it from the staff. The lash
is 10 feet long, made of small strips of buckskin, tanned

APPEAL. 25

SO as to be dry and hard, and plaited carefully and closely
together, of tlie thickness in the larger part of a man's
little finger, but quite small at each extremity. At the
furthest end of tiiis thonir is attached a cracker, nine
inches in length, made of strong sewing silk, twisted and
knotted, until it feels as firm as the hardest twine.

This whip, in an unpracticed hand, is a very awkward
and inefficient weapon ; but the best qualification x)f the
overseer of a cotton plantation, is the ability of using this
vv'hip with adroitness, and when wielded by an experien-
ced arm it is one of the keenest instruments of torture ever
invented by the ingenuity of man. The cat-o '-nine-tails,
used in the British military service, is but a clumsv in-
strument beside this whip, which has superseded the cow-
hide, the hickory, and every other species of lash on the
cotton plantations. The cowhide and the hickory bruise
and mangle the flesh of the sufferer ; but this ivhip cuts,
when expertly applied, almost as keen as a knife, and
never bruises the flesh nor injures the bones." What then
do our sisters say to using cotton which is raised under
the keen and cutting lash of this whi[), by the mancipated
mothers, wives and daughters of the South." Can these
sufferers really believe we are remembering them that
are in bonds as bound with them, whilst we freely use
what costs them so much agony t

And has the Lord uttered no rebuke to us in these fear-
ful times .'' Is there no lesson for us to learn in recent
events ? Who are the men that now weep and mourn
over their broken fortunes — their ruined hopes? Are they
not the merchants and manufacturers, who have traded
largely in the unrequited labor of the slave ? Men who
have joined hand in hand with the wicked, and entered
into covenant to rivet the chains of the captive ?

We are often told that free articles cannot be obtained;
but why not ? Our answer is, because there is so little
demand for them. Only let the moral sense of the free
States become so pure and so elevated as to induce them
to refuse to purchase slave-grown products, and the man-
ufacturers, and merchants, and grocers, will soon devise
some plan by which to supply their factories and stores
with free labor cotton and goods. But we may be asked
3

26 APPEAL.

Avhat are we to do until the market is supplied ? We un-
hesitatingly reply, suffer the inconvenience ot' deprivation,
and then will you, dear sisters, become the favored instru-
ments in the Lord's hand, of producing that change in
public feeling which will lead to'such action as will bring
the desired supply into our market. W6 find that those
who really wish to obtain such articles, are almost
universally able to do so, if they will pay a little higher
price, and be satisfied to wear what may not be of quite So
good a quality; but it is frequently the case that even
this trifling self-denial is not necessary.-

We v/ould remind you of the course pursued by our
revolutionary fathers and mothers when Great Britain
levied upon her colonies what they regarded as unjust
taxes. R^ad the words of the historian, and ponder well
the noble self-denial of the men and ivomen oi^ this coun-
try, when they considered their own liberties endangered
by the encroachm'^nts of England's bad policy. Look,
then, at the influence which their measures produced in
making it the interest of the merchants and manufacturers
in Great Britain to second the petitions of her colonies
for a redress of grievances, and judge for yourselves
whether the Southern planters would not gladly second the
efforts of the abolitionists, by petitioning their National and
State Legislatures for the abolition of slavery, if they
found they could no longer sell their slave-grown produce.

*' In most departments, by common consent, business
was carried on as though no Stamp Act had existed. This
was accompanied by spirited resolutions to risk all conse-
quences, rather than submit to use the paper required by
law. While these -matters were in agitation, the colonists
entered into associations against importing British manu-
factures, till the Stamp Act should be repealed. By sus-
pending their future purchases on the repeal of the Stamp
Act, the Colonists made it the interest of merchants and
manufacturers to solicit for that repeal. They had usu-
ally taken so great a proportion of British manufactures,
that the sudden stoppage of ^ all their orders, amounting
annually to two or three millions sterling, threw some
thousands in the mother country out of employment, and
induced them, from a regard to their own interests, to

APPEAL. . 27

advocate the measures wished for by America. The
petitions, by the Colonists were seconded by petitions
irom the merchants and manufacturers of Great Britain.
What the former prayed Tor as a matter of right and con-
nected with their liberties, ^he la.tter also solicited from
motives of immediate interest.

" In order to remedy the deficiency of British goods, the
colonists betook themselves to a variety of necessary
domestic manufactures. In a little time large quantities
of common cloths were brought to market ; and these,
though dearer and of a worse qucdily, were cheerfully pre-
feri-ed to similar articles imported from Britain. That
wool might riiot be wanting, they entered into resolutions
to abstain from eating lamb. Foreign elegancies were
laid aside. The ivomcn were as exemplary as the men
in various instances of self-denial. With great readiness
they refused every article of. decoration for their pc^rsons,
and luxury for. their tables. These restrictions, which
the colonists had voluntarily . imposed on themselves,
were so well .observed, that multitudes of artificers m
England were reduced to great distress, and some of their
iiiost flourishing manufactories v.ere in a great measure
at a stand." — Ramsay^s History, U. S., pp. 345-6.

Would not. a similar effect be produced in //iis country
at this time, if the w.omen of the free States would prac-
tice. the same self-denial which distinguished our mothers.
Let them refuse '.' every article of decoration for their per-
sons and luxury for their tables," and of convenience and
comfort, the use of which imposes upon the down-trodden
slave not s. paltry tax of pennies upon paper and tea, but
the heavy tribute of tears, and groans, and blood, and
perpetual bondage.

Our fathers and mothers were quick to discern the work-
ing of the principle of oppressioi) when it was applied to
themselves : their necks were galled by the friction of a
yery easy yoke, ^nd they were prompt to devise means
and ways by which to rid themselves of it. But to us,
dear sisters, is committed afar nobler it orh. We, ^yg
called upon, not to break the yoke which is fastened on
our own necks, but to aid in the generous, disinterested
effort to break asunder that which bows the heads of the

28 APPEAL.

poor in the very dust of degradation and wo. We are
called upon by the cries of a people " scattered and peeled,
meted out and trodden down," to obey the divine injunc-
tion, "Deliver the poor and needy, rid them out of the
hand of the wicked." Our fathers asserted their right to
freedom at the point of the bayonet and the mouth of the
cannon, but we repudiate all war and violence — "Our
weapons are not carnal, but spiritual :" we wiejd no other
sword than " the sword of the Spirit ;" we encounter the
foes of freedom with "the word of God," whilst our feet
are shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace, our
breasts covered with the shield of faith, our heads with
the helmet of salvation. We need no other armor, for
this is a moral conflict, and we know that "Truth is
mighty and wiH prevail."

V. NORTHERN WOMEN APOLOGIZE FOR THE SIN OF

SLAVERY.

Many have no correct views of the height and depth,
the length and breadth, and innumerable horrors of this
enormous system of crime. They too easily allow them-
selves to be persuaded of the mildness of American sla-
very, by those who go to the South, not to search out the
hidden works of darkness, not to visit the sighing captive
in the house of his bondage ; but to make their fortunes,
and to sit in the drawing-rooms of the rich and the great.
Such see no more of the internal machinery of slavery,
than the man who goes to the theatre and sits in the pit or
the boxes sees of what passes behind the curtain. Some
of us have been behind the scenes of the South, and we
feel it to be an imperative duty to assure you that slavery
is a whited sepulchre, which, however fair and beautiful
it may outwardly appear, is nevertheless "full of dead
men's bones and all uncleanness." We entreat you,
therefore, no longer to apologize for slavery, for we {ee\
assured that in so doing you are helping to deceive the
North as to the real state of things in the slave States,
and to paralyze her moral energies — to rivet the chains
of the colored man, and to blind the eyes and steel the
heart of the master to his highest interests and monstrous
obligations.

APPEAL. 29

VI. NORTHERN WOMEN HAVE DEEP-ROOTED PREJUDICES
AGAINST OUR COLORED BRETHREN AND SISTERS.

They gravely talk of their intellectual inferiority and
their physical organization, as sufficient reasons why
they nevershould he permitted to rise to an equality willi
the whites in this country, forgetting that they have not
yet proved the position assumed with regard to mental
inferiority. This we utterly deny^ and appeal to history
and facts to show that the colored is equal in capacity to
the white man.

Intellect of t lie colored man. — The honorable Alexander
H. Everett, in a speech delivered in Boston about ten
years ago, says, "Trace this very civilization of which
we are so pioud to its origin, and see where you will find
it. We received it from our European ancestors — they
had it from the Greeks and Romans, and the Jews. But
where did the Greeks, and the. Romans, and the Jews
get it ? They derived it from Ethiopia and Egypt — in
one word, from Africa. Moses, we are told, was in-
structed in all the learning of the Egyptians. The
founders of the principal Grecian cities, such as Athens,
Thebes and Delphi, came from Egypt, and for centuries
afterwards their descendants returned to that country, as
the source and centre of civilization. There it was that
the generous and stirring spirits of the time — Herodotus,
Homer, Plato, Pythagoras, and the rest — made their
noble voyages of intellectual and moral discovery, as
ours now make them in' England, France, Germany and
Italy. . . . . Well, sir, who were the Egyptians ? They
were Africans. And of what race? It is sometimes
pretended that, though Africans and of Ethiopian ex-
traction, they were not black. But what says the father
of history, who had travelled among them, and knew their
appearance as well as we know that of our neighbors in
C anada ? Herodotus tells us they were black with

curled hair It seems, therefore, that for this very

civilization of which we are so proud, and which is the
only ground of our present claim of superiority, we are
indebted to the ancestors of these very blacks, whom we
are pleased to consider as naturally incapable of civiliza-
tion. And it is worth while Mr. President, to remark,
3*

30 APPEAL.

that the prejudice which is commonly entertained in tliis
country, and which does not exist to anything like the
same extent in Europe, against the color of the blacks,
seems to have grown out of the unnatural position which
they occupy among us. At the period to wliich I have
just alluded, when the blacks took precedence of the whites
in civilization, science and political power, no such pre-
judice appears to have existed."

In this extract from Alexander H. Everett, the most un-
exceptionable evidence seems to be afforded as to the intel-
lectual capacity of the colored man. And in speaking of
the doctrine of his mental imbecility, he says, " I reject
with contempt and indignation this miserable heresy."
Dr. J. Mason Good also spurns the i.dea of his inferiority,
and thinks "that of all the arjiuments which have ever
been offered to support the doctrine of different species,
this is the feeblest and most superficial.^^ "It may," says he,
" suit the narrow purposes of a slave merchant — of a traf-
ficker in human nerves and muscles ; it may suit their
purpose to introduce such a distinction into their creed
and to let it constitute the whole of their creed ; but it is
a distinction too trifling and evanescent to claim the no-
tice of a physiologist lor a moment."

Blwmenbach, of Germany, had a private library com-
posed entirely of works written by colored men ; but it
has been the policy of Americans to exclude such books
from our public and private collections of taste and talent

— at least, so far as we have been able to ascertain.

In a sermon preached about thirty years since by Dr.
Griffin, late President of Williams College, in which he
endeavors to refute the false and malicious assertions rela-
tive to the inferiority of the colored man, he says, " Pass-
ing by many ancient Ethiopians, to whom 1 have only
seen a reference, and some instances of energy and prow-
ess in the field, I have arranged the names of more than
fifty negroes and mulattoes which are worthy to be pre-
served from oblivion. Among these, I could show you a
handsome portrait painter* — a distinguished physiciant

— skillful navigators^ — and useful ministers of religion. §

* Cugoano, once a s-lave. 1 James Durham, also at one time a slave. X ^'^^^

Cuftc'C and G. Vassa. $ Capetein and otlieis.

APPEAL. 31

I could show you those who could repeat from memory
the Koran,* and those who without rules and figures could
perform the most ditficult calculations with the rapidity of
thought.! I could show you those who are skilled in
Latin, Greek and Hebrew; and an instance or two, I
might add, of Arabic and Chaldaic. I could show you
teachers of the Latin language, a teacher of mathemat-
ics, J and a publisher of almanacs. § 1 could show you
poets — authors of letters, || histories, memoirs, 'H' — es-
says,** petitions to legislative bodies, t| and Latin verses
and dissertations. JJ 1 could show you a man " of great
wisdom and profound knowledge, several who were truly
learned, and one who gave private lectures on philosophy
at a university. ^^ I could show you members of the uni-
versities of Cambridge, Leyden and Wittemburg. 1
could show you one who took the degree of doctor of
philosophy, and was raised to the chair of a professor in
one of the first universities of Europe ; another who was
corresponding member of the French Academy ;[j|| and a
third who was an associate of the National Institute of
France. I could show you one who for many ages has
been surnamed in Arabia the Wise, and whose authority
Mahomet himself frequently appealed to in the Koran,
in support of his own opinion. I could show you men
of wealth and active benevolence : here a sable Howard
spending his life in visiting prisons, to relieve and reclaim
the wretched tenants, and consecrating all his property to
charitable uses ;^M there another founding a hospital for
poor negroes and mulattoes, and devoting his life and for-
tune to their comfort for more than forty years.*** In
another place, a third, making distant and expensive voy-
ages to promote the improvement of his brethren and the

colonization of Africa. ttt"

We hope, dear sisters, that we shall be excused for
dwelling so long on the intellectual capacity of the col-
ored man : we have done so, because we believe it is of
vital importance to his interest, that the ungenerous and

*Ste(iman mentions one. f Thomas Fuller and others. 1 Francis Williams.

$ Bannaker, a slave. |{ Sancho. TT Vassa. ** Otiiello ff Sancho.

Xt Capitein and Williams. §Q Anthony William Amo. ||l| L. Islet GeoflVoy.

KIT Joseph Kachel *** Jazniin Thomazeau. ttt ^^ul Cuffee.

32 APPEAL.

unfounded aspersions of his enemies should be completely
refuted, in order that all pretexts for treating him as an
inferior should be entirely destroyed. We must remem-
ber, that if in this country he has not risen to an equality
with the whites, it is solely because he has not had the
same advantages. In schools for colored children, we
have witnessed the same ability and anxiety to learn ; and
our experience is not only corroborated by the testimony
of many living teachers, but by that of Anthony Benezet,
who had the honor of being the first individual in America
who opened a school for colored children. He says, " I
can with truth declare, that among my tiegro scholars I
have found as great a variety of talent as among the like
number of whites ;" and then proceeds to assign the rea-
son irhy ive regard them as our inferiors : " and 1. am bold
to assert, that the notion of their inferiority is a vulgar
'prejudice^ founded on the pride of those who keep them
at so great a distance as to be unable to form a right judg-
ment of them.' ^

We are, however, often told that those coloj-ed men
who have excelled in intellect, are not black, and that
their superiority arises from a mixture with the white
race. The testimony of the Abbe Gregoire, who wrote
a book on the intellect of negroes, is directly contrary to
this opinion ; he says, " the number of negro writers i«
greater than that of mulattoes.'* And Wadstrom, who
travelled extensively in Africa, thought the blacks siipe-
rior to the whites, for says he, "the intellect of Africans
is so far from being of an inferior order, that one finds it
difficult to account for their acuteness which so far tran-
scends their means of improvement."*

But what further evidence of the intellectual capacities
of colored men do we need, than the attainments of those
who are now living in our free States, and occupying the
station of ministers of the gospel. Let any one who counts
them inferior, only go and hear a Cornish, a Raymond, a
Wright and a Williams, of New-York ; a Charleton, of
Virginia; a Meacham, of St. Louis; a Graham, of Nash-
ville ; a Small, of Boston, or a Gardner and a Douglass,

* This testimony is very valuable, because Lc had previously kept a school fjr
whites. . '

APPEAL. 33

of Philadelphia, and we .feel assured he will be ashamed
of ever having entertained an opinion so unjust to them,
and so derogatory to his own heart and head. We can-
not appeal to the abilities of our colored brethren here
as lawyers, physicians and statesmen, but why ? It is
not because ihey could not fill such stations among us, had
they the same advantages w'hich white men enjoy, but
simply because American prejudice has closed the doors
of our literary institutions against them, and pertina-
ciously refused to grant them the privilege of drinking
freely from that river of knowledge which flows so abun-
dantly throughout our borders. I^t we can point you to
the West-India islands, first to Hayti, whose government
was organized by colored men, among whom Touissant
L'Ouverture shines pre-eminent as a statesman, as well
as a warrior, and which has been for more than 30 years
entirely under their control. We will next point you to
the island of St. Thomas, a Danish island, where slavery
still exists, and yet the aid-de-camp of the governor-gen-
eral of all the Danish West-Indies, is a colored man,
who it is supposed is the wealthiest man in the island,
being worth a million, which vast sum he made by mer-
chandize. In the island of St. Christopher, the propor-
tion of colored members in the Assembly is increasing
every year; it is supposed that at least one eighth of the
present Assembly are colored men. Several of the spe-
cial magistrates are colored men. The editor of the " St.
Christopher Weekly Intelligencer and Advertiser," is a
colored man, who has been a bold advocate of liberal
principles. He is described as a thorn in the side of the
planters, and a great blessing to the island. In the
island of Dominica, four or five of the members of the
Assembly are colored men. In Antigua there is now a
colored methodist minister, who is represented by a
planter who is iveW acquainted with the clergymen of the
island, as the most clear and logical reasoner and fin-
ished writer among them. In Jamaica, out of five rep-
resentatives from the town of Kingston, four of them are
colored ; and a colored lawyer lately died in this island,
who was acknowledged to be an ornament to his profes-
sion. Many other instances of talent and worth and

34 APPEAL

wealth might be adduced; but it seems impossible after
all which has been said, any doubt cian remain on your
minds as to the equality ot" the colored with the white
man. To the above instances we would add that of James
McCune Smith, who after being cast out of the semina-
ries of learning in this Republican Despotism, was re-
ceived into the University of GJasgow, where he has re-
cently graduated and taken the highest, honor, though he
competed with hundreds of tvhite men.

Now, beloved sisters, what do you say to these proofs
of the intellectual abilities of our colored brethren ? Can
you rejoice to find thaf^you were mistaken in your opinion
of their inferiority ? Are you ready to extend to them
the hand of a sister, to welcome them upon that platform
of equal rights, social, civil and religious, on which they
are as much entitled to stand erect as-any white man in
our land ?

Physical Organization. But we will now endeavor to
. answer the second objection urged against the colored
man's equality, which is his physical organization. lie
has a black, or it may be a yellow- skin. From these
peculiarities, it is argued that he beJongs to a different
race. This we confess we cannot understand, if the
Bible account of man's creation; is authentic ; for there
we are told that Eve was the "mother of all living."
There can therefore be but 07ie race oi^ human beings^ as
they have all sprung from one common parentage. This
holy book speaks of different nations, people, kindreds,
and tongues, but tells us nothing of ditlerent races ; so
far from it that it expressly declares **God hath made of
one blood all the nations, to dwell on all the face of the
earth." But there are others who gravely tell us that
Noah was the second father of mankind, nnd that he had
three sons, one of whom was white, one red, and one
black, and that from thejn have descended the varieties
of the human family. This is an assertion without proof,
and it does appear to us to be a very absurd one, as
learned physiologists all agree in the opinion, that differ-
ence of color is produced by climate, food. See. Butfon
says that "man though white in Europe, black in Africa,
yellow in Asia, and red in America, is still //le s«)ne

APPEAL. 33

animai, tinged only with the color of the climate." It
appears. self-evident then, that Noah's sons were of but
one comple-Vion, when they separated after the jflood, to
people the three then known continents, and that the
cojor of their descendant's has been produced by the
difference of climate" into which they emigrated. "No
matter what the original complexion of the emigrants to
any country may have been, it is always found to accom-
modate itself to the hue peculiar to that country or cli-
mate. Hpnce the Jews, who v/ere doubtless originally
air of the same complexion, and who never intermarry
with the nations among whom they sojourn, are found to
be white in Germany and Poland, su-artliy in Sj)ain and
Portugal, olive in the Barbary states and Egypt, and
blacJ: in Hindoostan. And hence a colony of Ethiopians,
who settled at Colchis on the Black Sea, 2,000 years
ago, have now become white, and the Portuguese who
settled 200 years since on the coast of Africa, black."

"But still we shall be asked, if color be the effect of
climate, why the negroes born in the United States are not
white .'' We answer, that it should be remembered, ours
'is not the native climate of the white man.' The copper
color is that which is incident to this climate, therefore it
would be very unnatural for the black man to turn white
on our shores.

The learned professor of Gottengen remarks, that in
Guinea, not only men, but dogs, birds, and particularly
the gallinaceous tribe, are black ; whilst near the frozen
seas, bears and other animals are white. Here it may be
asked why are not men who live under the same parallels
of latitude in Africa and America of the same color.
We reply that climate does not depend entirely upon
latitude, but very materially upon the face of a country
also. In Africa a vast extent of sandy desert stretches
across that continent, which renders the reflection of the
sun's ravs far more intense than it can be in America,
where the surface is broken by mountains and hills cov-
ered with verdure, and diversified and cooled by lakes
and rivers. The products of these two countries are also
different, and therefore the food of the inhabitants is dis-
similar. Hence even in Africa, the inhabitants of the

36 APPEAL.

mountain and the plain differ greatly in their complexions.
This will be fully understood when we remember that the
sun's rays have no heat until they have come in contact
with the earth's surface, from the diversified reflecting
power of which, our atmosphere derives its comparative
degrees of heat.

The simple reason which the Bible assigns for the
color of black in the human species is truly philosophical.
"Look not upon me," said the bride in Canticles, " be-
cause I am black, for the sun hath looked upon me."
Her blackness was occasioned by the intense heat of a
tropical sun, and so is the African's;

If then the black skin is not the mark of a distinct race,
but merely the peculiarity incident to climate and food,
what shall we say about it — how shall we regard it?
As an insuperable barrier between our colored brethren
and sisters and ourselves — as a sufficient reason for
their being deprived of valuable privileges and social en-
joyments among us — or a trivial distinction, as unworthy
of our notice as the difference of color in the hair and
the eyes of our fairer companions and friends ? Is it not
wonderful and humiliating to us as Republicans and Chris-
tians, that we should ever have made the sinful distinc-
tions and silly assertions which we have, because some
of our fellow-creatures wear a skin not colored like our
own .'* Let the time past then suffice, and let us now re-
solve to do all we can in vindicating the character of our
colored brethren from the unjust aspersions which the
world and the church have united in heaping upon them.
Women ought to feel a peculiar sympathy in the colored
man's wrongs, for, like him, she has been accused of men-
tal inferiority, and denied the privileges of a liberal edu-
catioa.

VII. NORTHERN WOMEN ARE LENPING THEIR AID TO
THE COLONIZATION SOCIETY.

If the advocates of this scheme would only call it by
its true name, the Expatriation Society, we would be
spared the trouble of entering into an explanation of its
character and objects. But the very fact of its having
been clothed with the mantle of benevolence, is a power-

APPEAL. 37

fal" reason w1iy Ave slioiild attempt to exhibit it, just in
that liffht which its own friends and advocates have thrown
-upon it, ifi their public speeches and its official docu-
ments.

Before enumerating oiir i-easons for condemning the
principles of this society, we will give some little account
-of its origin. As early ^s th« year 1777, Jcfierson form-
ed u plan for colonizing the free colored population of the
United States, on some of the western vacant lands ; but
it proved a failure. In 1787, Dr' Thornton, of Washing-
ton, formed another scheme to effect the same purpose
on the western coast of Africa, antl published an addi^sss
to the colored people residing in Massachusetts and Rhode
Island, inviting them to accompany him. A sufRcieni
number agreed to go, and were pT^pared for the expedi-
tion; hut this project likewise failed for want of funds.
About the year 1800 or 1801, soon after the insurrection
of Gabriel, at Richmond, Virginia, the impulse of fear
prompted another effort to throw from our shores the free
■people of color, and any slaves who. might be suspected
of insurrectionary intentions. The Legislature of Vir-
ginia, in secret session, insti'ycted Mr. JNIonroe, then
Governor of the State, to apply to the President of the
Unitexd States, and urge him to institute negociations with
some of the powers of Europe, possessed of colonies on
the eoast ©f A-frica, to grant an asylum, to which our
^emancipated neirroes might be sent. Mr. Jefferson open- .
•ed a negociation with the Sierra Leone Company, for
!that pAjrpese, but without success. He subsequently ap-
plied to the. Government of Portugal, but failed. The
project was then abandoned, as hopeless. In the Legis-
dature of Virginia of 1816, the subject was again brought
■forward, and the following resolution was adopted by a
Jarge majority: "Resolved, that the Executive be re-
quested to correspond with the President of the United
States, for the purpose of obtaining a territory on the
coast of Africa, or at some other place, not within any
of the States or territorial governments of the United
States, to serve as an asylum for such persons of color
as are now free, and may desire the same, and for those
who may hereafter be emancipated within the commou-
4

38 APPEAL,

wealth, and that the senators and representatives of this
State in the Congress ol' the United States, be requested
to exert their best efforts to aid the President of the Uni-
ted States in the attainment of the above object."

This resolution was passed in the Virginia House of
Delegates, some time before the formation in the city of
Washington of the American Colonization Society. The
origin of this society is thus spoken of in a memorial pre-
sented by the managers of the Colonization Society to
Congress in 1817 : "The design of this institution, the
committee are apprized, originated in the disclosure of the
secret resolutions of prior legislatures of that State ; to
which may also be ascribed, it is understood, the renewal
of their obvious purpose in the resolution subjoined to
this report — a resolution which was first adopted by the
House of Delegates of Virginia, on the 14th December
1816, with an unanimity which denoted the deep interest
that it inspired, and which openly manilested to the world
a steady adherence to the humane policy which had se-
cretly animated the same councils at a much earlier period.-
This brief, but correct history of the origin of the Amer-
ican Colonization Society, evinces that it sprang Irom a
deep solicitude for Southern interest, and among those
most competent to discern and promote them," i. e. among
slaveholders. The African Repository informs us, th^t at
its formation, every one who spoke was a slaveholder.
In an address of the Rockbridge (Virginia) Colonization
Society, published in Vol. IV. p. 274, we find this asser-
tion: " About twelve years ago, some of the wisest men
in the nation, mostlij slaveholders, termed in the city of
Washington the present American Colonization Society."
Its first president, Bushrod Washington, was a slaveholder
all his life, and during his continuance in ojffice sold fifiy-
four human beings, who were driven off in chains to
Louisiana.

From that time to the present, it has been principally
managed by slaveholders. We make this assertion on
the authority of the African Repository, the official organ
of the Colonization Society ; which, in speaking of the
members of the society, repeatedly asserts that they are
*' mostly slaveholders " — " chiefly slaveholders " — " by

APPEAL. 39

far the larger part citizens of slaveholding States;" and
that ** from the first it obtained its most decided and effi-
cient support from the slaveholding States." Chai-les
Carroll, its second president, who signed the declaration
that all men are created free and equal, died owning near
one thousand slaves. Its third president, James Madison,
also died a slaveholder ; and its fourth president, Henry
Clay, is now a slaveholder. This society, then, origi-
nated in the Ancient Dominion, in the midst of slavery;
and its members and publications have again and again
urged the fact of their being slaveholders as an incontro-
vertible evidence of their peculiar fitness to manage its
concerns, and their claims to Southern confidence and
Southern aid. Thus, in the African Repository, Vol. VII.
p. 100, we find the following: ** Being mostUj slaveholders
ourselves having a common interest with you on this subject,
an equal opportunity of understanding it, and the same
motives to prudent action, what better guaranty can be
afforded for the just discrimination and the safe operation
of our measures." The league, then, which has been
formed between the colonizationist and the slaveholder
seems to us to be as close as that which existed between
Jehoram and Jehoshaphat, when the latter said unto the
former, '' I am as thou art, my people as thy people, my«
horses as thy horses." Read now our objections, and
judge for yourselves whether this assertion be not true.
We condemn it —

I. Because it surrenders the great principle, that man
cannot justly hold man as property, and regards the wrest-
ing of the slaves from their masters as great an outrage
as the invasion of their right of property in houses, cattle,
and land. To substantiate this charge, we quote from the
African Repository, Vol. I. p. 283: "We hold ihe'iv slaves
as we hold their other propertij sacred." In Vol. II. p. 13,
we find these words: ** Does this society wish to meddle
with our slaves as our rightful property? I answer, no —
I think not." And in a speech delivered by Henry Clay
he said, " It was proper again and again to repeat, that it
.was far from the intention of the society to affect m any
manner the tenure by which a certain species of jyroptrty
is held/' He was himself a slaveholder ; and he consid-

40 APFEAI,,.

ered that kind of properhj as invwiahle as any other in tJu
country. ' . ■ ■ '

II. Because it not only is not hostile to slavery, but in
its reports and in its official organ, and by its auxiliary
societies and principal supporters, exonerates slaveholders
from guilt, and represents their cWwr/ja/?/?/ as their mis/"or-
tune. In the seventh vol. oi^ the African Repository, are
these declarations: '^It (the society y condemns no man
because he is a slaveholder'^ — p. 200. "They (the aboli-
tionists) confound the misfortiuies oi' one genet^ation with
the crimes of another, and would sacrifice both individua!
and public good to an unsubstantial theory of the rights of ,
man " — p. 202. From the Second Annual Report of the
New- York State Colonization Society, We extract the f6l-
louing exculpation of slaveholders : '*The existence of
slavery among us, though not at all to be objected to our
Southern brethren as afaiilt, is y^t a blot on our national
character," .&-C.

III. Because it openly, actively, uncompromisingly de-
nounced the immediate abolition of slavery as injustice to '
the masters, a calamity to the slaves, daiii^erous tosocicty,
and contrary to the requirements of Christianity. We
prove this assertion by an extract from the First Annual-
Report of the New-Jersey Colonization Society : "The
inhabitants of the South cannot and ought 7iof suddenly to
emancipate their slaves to remain among them free. Such '
a measure would be no blessino; to the slaves, but the verv
madness of self-destruction to the whites." In Vol. III.,
of the African Repository, p. 97, are these words : "The
scope of the society is large enough, but it is. in no wise
min^gled and confounded with the broad sweeping views
of a yfit' fanatics ia America-, who woyldurge uS on tO'
the k)tal abolition of slavery."

. IV.' Becau&e i;t.fo=FmaUy lays clown the doctrine that it
is not incumbent on art oppressors' to do justly and love
mercy «Qtr,,and that it is pi^oper to cease from robbery and
sin by a slow process. In Vol. V.' of the African Reposi- •
tory, is this sentiment, p. 329 : '' Were the very spirit of
angelic charity to pervade and fill the hearts of all the •
slaveholders in our land, it Would by no mea7is require that
all the slaves should be instantaneously liberated^"

APPEAL. 41

V. Because it confesses that its measures are calcu-
lated to secure the slave-system from destruction — to re-
move the apprehensions of slaveholders — to increase the
value of slave property — and thus to perpetuate the thral-.
dom of native Americans. John Randolph, in a speech
delivered at the first meeting oi" the Colonization Society,
remarked, " So far from being connected with the aboli-
tion of slavery, the measures proposed would prove one of
the greatest securities to enable the master' to keep in posses-
sion his oivn property. ^^ In the third volume of the Afri-
can Repository", we find the following: " To remove these
people [free colored persons) from among us, will increase
the usefulness and improve the moral character of those
who remain in servitude, and with whose labors the coun-
try is unable to dispense. '' And in Vol. II. p. 344 : "The

EXECUTION OF ITS SCHEME WOULD AUGMENT, INSTEAD
OF DIMINISHING, THE VALUE OF THE PROPERTY LEFT
BEHIND."

VI. Because it positively denies that it has any refer-
ence to the work of emancipation. In a speech of James
S. Green, published with the First Annual l>eport of the
New-Jersey Colonization Society, is this explicit avowal :
"Our society, and the friends of colonization, wish to be
distinctly understood upon this point. From the begin-
ning they have disavowed, and they do yet disavow, that
their object is the emancipation of the slaves.^' In the third
Vol. of the African Repository, p. 197, this official organ
of the society declares, " Zf i^ no abolition society: it ad-
dresses as yet arguments to no master, and disavows with
horror the idea of offering temptations to any slave. It
denies the design of attempting emancipation, either partial
or gradual.^'' And again : " The Colonization Society, as
such, have renounced wholly the name and the character-
istics of abolitionists. On this point, they have been un-
justly and injuriously slandered. Into their account the
subject of Emancipation does not enter at all.'^ — p. 306.

VII. Because it holds that slaveholders are such from
necessity, — that the oppressive laws which are enacted
against the free colored and slave population are justified
by sound policy, and that it is wrong to increase the num-
ber of the free blacks by emancipation. We quote now

42 APFEAt,

from the North American Review of July, 183'^ : "Thou-
sands are connected with tlie system of slavery from ne-
cessity, and not from choice. .... The vast majority of
those who would emancipate,- we have no hesitation in
sayirig, are deterred from it by a patriotism and a i^iii-
LANTHROPY whicli look bcyond the bound oftheir partic-
ular district and beyond the ostensible quality of the
mere abstract act." And in the Ninl.h Annual Report of
the Colonization Society we iind the following declaration
with regard to the oppressive laws against the people of
color: " Such, unhappily, is the case : but there is a ne-
cessity for it ; and so long as they rematin among us, will
that necessity continue." '

VIII. Because it denies the power of the Gospel to over-
come prejudice, and maintains that no moral or educa-
tional means can ever raise the colored population from
their degradation to respectability and usefulness in this
country. By inculcating this monstrous doctrine, it meas-
urably paralyzes in the breasts of those who embrace it
all efforts to improve the character and condition of this
depressed and injured class. The following may be found
in the African Repository, Vol. IV. pp. 118, 119: "In
every part of the United States, there is a broad and im-
passable line of demarcation between every one who has
one drop of African blood in his veins, and every other
class in the community. The habits, the feelings, all the
prejudices of society — prejudices which neither refine-
ment, nor argument, nor education, nor religion itself,
can subdue — mark the people of color, whether bond or
free, as the subjects of a degradation inevitable and in-
curable. The African belongs by birth to the very lowest
station in society ; and from that station he can never
RISE, be his talents, his enterprise, his virtues what they
may. . . . They constitute a class by themselves — a class
out of which no individual can be elevated, and below which
none can be depressed."

IX. Because, while it professes to remove those emi-
grants only who go " with their own conscnV^ to Africa, it
is the instrument of a cruel persecution against the free
people of color, by its abuse of their character, repre-
senting them as seditious, dangerous and useless. It

APPEAL. 43

contends, moreov-er, that emancipation should not take
place without the simultaneous expatriation of the liber-
ated — thus leaving to the slave the choice of banishment
or 'perpetual servitude. In the African Repository, Vol. II.
p. 18B, the following sentiment is found: " No scheme
of abolition will meet any support that leaves the emanci-
pited blacks 'among us." In Vol. III. p. 26, " We would
say, libei^ate them only.on condition of their going to Jifrica.^*
In Vol. IV'. p; 226, " Tam nOt complaining of the oicners
of slaves L it would be as humane to throw them from the
decks in the middle passoge, as to set them free in our
country.-"" And on p. 300, " ^3 scheme cf emancipation
without colonization (i.e. expatriatioiv) they, know, and see,
and feel to be productive of ?io//ii«g- but evil ; evil to all
whom it affects — -to the white population, to. the slayes,
to the manumitted /Aemse/res."

X. Because it is held in abhorrence by the free peo-
ple of color, wherever they possess the liberty of speech
and the me-ans of intelligence, as a scheme full of evil to
themselves and to their enslaved brethren. This may be
amply proved, by quoting resolutions passed at hundreds
of meetings held by them to protest against the scheme
of expatriation many years before any Anti-Slavery soci-
ety was ever formed in this country. We will transcribe
but one, which we regard as a noble specimen of that true
elevation of moral feeling to which many of our colored
brethren have attained, notwithstanding the withering,
crushing influence of prejudice in this land : " Resolved,
That we never will separate ourselves voluntarily from the
slave population in this country : they are our brethren by
the ties of consanguinity, of suffering, and of wrong; and
we feel that there is more virtue in suffering privations
with them, than fancied advantages for a season."

XI. Our last objection is founded on the fact, that this
society, although it professes to be the greatest friend of
the colored people, is exerting no influence to produce a
correct public sentiment with regard to their rights in this
the land of their birth. Far otherwise ; their love is a
love to get rid of them — a love to keep them low in the
dust under the feet of oppression and the scowl of con-
tempt and the ban of a separate and inferior caste, as long

44 APPEAL.

as they remain in their own native America. Of the prin-
ciples of Colonization, then, we fully and freely express
our entire disapprobation. We believe them to be utterly
unchristian — calculated alike to fosterthe feelingsof pride
and prejudice in the aristocracy of the North, and the
unjust, unreasonable oppression of our colored brethren
and sisters — and to blind the eyes, sear the conscience,
and steel the heart of the slaveholder at the South.

The effect which this scheme is to produce upon Africa
is quite another thing : were that influence ever so favor-
able, our opinion of its principles and its tendency to
strengthen the unholy feeling of prejudice in the United
States must remain the same. An immense amount of
evil has been done here : our colored brethren have en-
treated and protested in vain — they have lifted up their
voices in vain, and besought Colonizationists to spare
them the abuse which they have heaped upon their de-
fenceless heads — to roll back from ofT their prostrate
bodies and minds the ponderous wheels of that American
Juggernaut, Prejudice, which their hands have dragged
over them by incessantly preaching up the doctrine that
" they never can rise" in this country, and that even reli-
gion itself C3.nnot subdue in the hearts of Americans that
hatred of the colored man which now fills their bosoms.

We consider it our duty, then, solemnly to protest
against the influence of colonization principles on the free
and the bond in our land, and to urge our sisters to exam-
ine them for themselves, and to judge for themselves
whether they are not evil, unsound, and unsustainable on
the broad basis of human rights and Christian love. To
those who justify this scheme on the ground of its evan-
gelizing Africa, we would point to this emphatic, tremen-
dous declaration of the Apostle Paul when vindicating the
purity of Christian principles from the false accusations of
his enemies, some of whom afllirmed that the apostles
said, " let us do evil that good may come, whose condemna-
tion is Jms/."

W^e would, then, turn to the effects which colonization
has already produced on Africa. Its deleterious influence
on that devoted country had become so manifest to the
English philanthropists that Dr. Philip was recalled trom

APPEAL. 45

South Africa, that he might lay before the British public
the warking of this system on the natives. From a speech
delivered by him in Exeler Hall., we copy the following:
• " The system has been put into operation and supported
by the nations of Europe, to the manifest injury of the na-
tives of America, Africa, and other parts of the world,^*
After noticing some of these, the Doctor preceeded, " Jn
the beginning of the last century the European colony in
Africa was confined to within a few miles of Cape Town.
From that period it has advanced till it now includes
many more square miles than are to be found in England,
Scotland and Ireland. (If a traveller who had visited
that country twenty-five years ago, were to take his stand
on the banks of the Koiskama river, and ask what had
become of the natives whom he saw there on his former
visit ; if he took his stand on, the banks of the Sunday
river, and looked" forward to. a country seventy miles in
breadth before him, he might ask the same question ; if
he were to take his stand again on the Fish river, and
there extend his views to Caffraf'ia, he might ask the same
question ; and- were he. to take his stand upon "the snow
mountains called CraafT Reinet, (he would have before
him a country containing- 40,000 square miles,) — and ask
where was the . immense concourse that he saw there'
twenty-five years ago, tio man x^ould tell him where they
were»") . ■ " . '

In Zion's Watchman, we find the succeeding remarks
on this extract, and as they contain our own views and
give some interesting facts relative to Liberia, which are
not generally known, we have inserted them without any
alteration. • •

" A fine illustration this, of the benefits of colonization-
to the naiives of any country ? ■ It shows that colonization
is only another name for extermination. As long as hu-
man wickedness is what it is, such will ever be the result.
Such it ever has been. 'You can't civilize the Hottentots,*
was the doctrine of South Africa. 'An Indian will be an
Indian — you can't civilize him,' was the doctrine in the
United. States ; and accordingly the natives have melted
away and been destroyed in both cases, just in proportion
as the tide of colonization has moved onward. Such,

4€ APPEAL.

too, thus far, has been, as a matter-of-fact, the result at
Liberia. To this moment there has been no amalgama-
tion of the natives and colonists. On the contrary, the
same line of distinction and the same separate interests
and mutual jealousies exist there as have existed in other
cases. The colonists are called by the natives, ' 'Meri-
cans,' their customs, ' 'Merica man's fash.' Governor
Pinney himself, (see letter some three years since,) de-
clared that ' the natives are, as to wealth and intellectual
cultivation, related to the colonists as the negro in Amer-
ica is to the white man — and this fact, added to their
mode of dress, leads to the same distinction as exists in
America between colors,' so that ' a colonist of any dye,
(and many Southern are of a darker hue than the Vey,
or Dey, or Croo, or Bassoo,) would, if at all respectable,
think himself degraded by marrying a native ; the mis-
sionaries of the American Board, Wilson and Wynkoop,
(Missionary Herald, June, 1834,) select the site for the
* mission settlement' half a mile from the colonial settle-
ment ; ' and then,' say they, ' we took all the pains we
could to impress the mind of the king and his people with
the fact, that the mission is to be entirely distinct from
the colony, and will be identified with the interests of
the natives,' as if it were vain to secure their confidence,
so strong their jealousies and so separate their interests
from those of the colonists, except by taking sides with
them ; and finally, in August, 1835, (note African Re-
pository, May, 1836,) we find the citizens of Monrovia
enacting as a law, ' that all Kroomen residing at Kroo-
town, on that side of the Mesurado river, shall pay annu-
ally to the town of Monrovia the sum of one dollar and
fifty cents, and do any kind of fatigue duty required by
the president of the town council ; and further, that all
Kroomen coming there to reside ' shall report themselves
within five days to the president of the town council, and
receive a certificate granting them permission to reside
(not in Monrovia but even) in Krootown — for which they
shall pay the sum of one dollar and fifty cents ; and all
neglecting to comply with this resolution shall, on con-
viction, pay the sum of two dollars, and leave the settle-
ment ; and in case of failure to pay the fine, shall be

APPEAL. 47

compelled to do public labor until the fine is satisfied ;'
and not these only, but ' that all other natives, not in the
employment of the colonists of the town, shall when called
upon by proper authority, do fatigue duty of ANY NA-
TURE that may be assigned them '/ thus, instead of
amalgamating them with the colony, they are branding
them as a suspected and servile class, and giving their
president the semi-power of a slaveholder.

'* Now, be it remembered, (see Phillip's South Africa,)
that all this is the very kind of encroachment which
marked the early history of colonization in South Africa.
A more perfect counterpart could not be found. But with
such a beginning, and proceeding as it did from bad to
worse, why was it that colonization there did not long
ago result in the utter extermination of the natives? Sim-
ply and only because that colony was under the control of
fi home government, and was to some extent restricted in
its powers of mischief.. With no restriction whatever,
titen, of this kind, what will — nay, what must be, the end
of such a beginning in Liberia ? Evil, and evil only, and
evil continually ; and if the gospel makes progress among
the natives, it will be only by the instrumentality of those
who keep ' entirely distinct from the colony, and identi-
fied with the interests of the natives,' and who do what
they do, not by the help, but in spite of the influence of
the colony. Such has been the case in South Africa —
and such, as the facts already show, must be the case in
Liberia."

If, then, colonization has already proved such a curse
to Africa, and if Liberia is treading in the footsteps of the
colonies which preceded her ; if the missionary is indeed
compelled to plant the standard of the cross betjond the
limits of Cape Palmas, and to disavoiv all connection ivith
it ; how can we possibly flatter ourselves any longer with
the delusive hope that the land of Ham will be evangel-
ized by colonization, particularly when we remember that
according to the declaration of colonizationists, these very
colonists are " a nuisance from which it were a blessing
to be free," " the subjects of a degradation inevitable and
incurable.^'

But here we shall be met with the assertion, that these

48 APPEAL.

colonies will put an end to the slave trade. What have they
done towards the attainment of thisohject? We here copy
from the most favorable account which we have seen of
the state of the colonies, contained in an Official commu-
nication to the Secretary of the Navy from Capt. Joseph
J. Nicholson, of the Navy, dated January 8th, 1837.
*^The slave-trade within the last three years has seriously
injured the colony. Not only has it diverted the industry
of the natives, but it has effoctually cut otTthe communi-
cation with the interior. Within a year four slave

FACTORIES HAV^E BEEN ESTABLISHED ALMOST WITHIN SIGHT

OF THE COLONY." — [Bassa Cove.]

**And what assurance have we that the colony itself
when grown up and independent will not follow the exam-
ple of Christian Maryland, and the Christian capital of
our own Christian land, and set up a trade in the bodies
and souls of its own citizens or in the '* menials " that it
may buy of the heathen .'' In doing so, it would only
imitate the example of the honorable Bus.hrbd Washing-
ton, the first president of the Colonization Society,, who
sold a large number of slaves into tiie hopeless bondage
of the South." We doubt not that such will actuallv be
the case in Liberia, unless a correct public sentiment is
created by anti-slavery efforts and anti-slavery principles,
which will throw a healthful influence over the colony
before it becomes strong enough to govern itself. Colo-
nization principles could not - certainly pacify public
opinion there any more than it has done it here ; and if-
slavery is a necessarij evil in America, why may it not be
a necessary evil in xVfrica ? If the society condemns no
man for being a slaveholder here, how could it possibly
condemn any of tiie colonists for holding slaves there ?
The holy principles of truth change not with climate nor
with color nor with circumstance, but are, like their great
Author, the same yesterday, to-day and forever ; the same
on the hill-tops and green valleys of America, and the
sickly shores and sandy deserts o{ Africa. O! then our
sisters, for the sake of the slave, whose condition as prop-
erty is rendered more secure by colonization, according to
the showing of the societv itself; for the sake of the free
people of color, whose hopes of usefulness and rcspecta-

APPEAL. 49L

bility in their own native land, are completely blasted by
the vituperation and slanders which are heaped upon them
by its advocates ; for the sake of the manumitted slave, to
whom is oifered the sad alternative of exile or bondage,
and for the sake of our white brethren and sisters in
whose hearts the weed of prejudice grows with frightful
luxuriance, nursed by the transplanting hand of coloniza-
tion — O! for the sake of the bond and the free, the colored
and the white, we beseech you to pause and reflect, and
pray over this subject, before you any longer throw your
influence into the scale of unholy prejudice and cruel ex-
patriation, rather than into that of human rights and Chris-
tian philanthropy. We pray you give no countenance to
a society which seeks to banish our free colored citizens
from their own country. Do not admit for a moment that
they have "no right to live in the white man's home-
stead," as colonizationists have denominated the United
States. But on the contrary, let us openly and constantly
plead their cause, assert their rights as Americans, and do
all that we can to produce that correct public sentiment
which will throw open our literary institutions to them,
and that spirit of true repentance which will induce us as
a nation to nurse and cherish in the bosom of fraternal
love these trembling injured outcasts of society. Let us
protest against that cruelty which would cast our brethren
on the barbarous and sickly shores of Africa, and that
strange philanthropy which, while it builds a college in
Liberia, refuses to grant to the colored man in this coun-
try the privileges of a liberal education. Let us then
endeavor to hasten the time when " for their shame they
shall have double, and for confusion they shall rejoice in
their portion."

Yin. THE COLORED WOMEN OF THE NORTH ARE OP-
PRESSED.

The eighth reason we would urge for the interference
of northern women with the system of slavery is, that in
consequence of the odium which the degradation of sla-
very has attached to color even in the free States, our col-
ored sisters are dreadfully oppressed here. Our semina-
5

50 APPEAL.

ries of learning are closed to them,* they are almost
entirely banished from our lecture rooms, and even in the
house of God they are separated from their white breth-
ren and sisters as though we were afraid to come in con-
tact with a colored skin. Listen now to the sad experi-
ence of one of these oppressed and injured ones. We
quote from a letter recently received from a colored young
woman of a neighboring city. *' For the last three years
of my life, I can truly say, my soul has hungered and
thirsted after knowledge, and 1 have looked to the right
hand and to the left, but there was none to give me food.
Prejudice has strictly guarded every avenue to science
and cruelly repulsed all my efforts to gain admittance to
her presence." Hear, too, her description of her feelings
in attending a place of worship in this city. '* I have
been to meeting to-day, and can say of a truth, it was
good to be there, for the Master of assemblies was present
and the broad wing of his love rested on us as a canopy.
Notwithstanding 1 am so often blessed in going to meeting,
I find it a grievous cross. My heart sinks within me at
times when I look round me and do not see one familiar
face, and feel that /am despised for jny complexion and
perhaps considered as an intruder."

■ Here, then, are some of the bitter fruits of that invete-
rate prejudice which the vast proportion of northern w'o-
men are cherishing tovyards their colored sisters; and let
us remember that every one of us who denies the sinful-
ness of this prejudice, under the fiUse pretext of its being
** an ordination of Providence" " no more to be changed
than the laws of nature," and fixed beyond the control of
any kumnn power ; yea, a feeling which ''religion itself
cannot subdue ;" every one of its who make these coloniza-
tion excuses for hugging to our bosoms the viper which
strikes such deadly stings into the very hearts of our op-
pressed sisters, is awfully guilty in the sight of Him who

* To the honor of OI)erIin Institution, we would say that it is a noble exception to
the ban of proscription which denies to our sisters the i)rivilcge of obtaining a liberal
educa'iori iw our hi;;h schools It stands erect in our land like a pillar of marble
bearing on its capital these words, ' Of all monopolies a monopoly of knowledge is '
the worst. Let it be as active as the oce in, as free as the wind, as universal as the
Bunbeams." It is a ciiy set upon a hill in the midst of ibis ' hypocritical nation."
A liglit revealing that prejudice which bancs like a dark cloud over the literary insti-
tutions of the ' Freest Government in the world."

APPEAL. 51

is no respecter of persons. If it be a sin to despise the
man clothed in vile raiment, and to say to such an one
*' stand thou there or sit here under my footstool," how
much greater must be the crime of despising our sister
because God has clothed her in a darker skin than our
own. How solemn the reflection, that '* W^hoso oppress-
eth the poor reproacheth his Maker. ^^ Yes, our sisters,
little as we may be willing to admit it, yet it is assuredly
true, that whenever we treat a colored brother or sister
in a way diflerent from that in which we would treat them
were they white, we do virtually reproach our Maker for
having dyed their skins of a sable hue.

IX. TRUE CAUSE OF THE INCREASE OF PREJUDICE.

It is said that this prejudice has increased to a dreadful
extent since Anti-Slavery Societies were formed in our
country, and we are often told that upon ms must rest all
the blame. Now we contend that the victims of this pre-
judice are the very best judges of this matter, and we ap-
peal to the sister from whose letters we have already
quoted, to know what are the views of the colored people
with I'egard to it. In another letter she says, '* They
know the American Colonization Society to be their most
potent enemy at home, they feel its iron grasp upon their
necks, pressing them to the very dust, and behold with
horror and dismay that prejudice groivs more fierce and
bitter ivherever its infiuence is felt. ^^ And again, in a letter
of a still more recent date : " I solemnly believe that the
American Colonization Society is the most cruel and po-
tent enemy of the free people of color, that it seeks to
rivet faster the fetters of the slave, by driving the free
people from their native land, that it originated in hatred
to us, and that it has increased prejudice a thousand fold^
by asserting that we are ** too debased to be reached by
heavenly light. It is sustained by constant and artful ap-
peals to the prejudices of our white brethren and sisters,
against our complexions, and we view all their proceed-
ings with abhorrence, and receive their protestations of
kindness, as the most bitter moikery." And, again, in
speaking of an Anti-Slavery lecturer whom she had heard,
she writes thus : " He proved so clearly what we feel so

52 APPEAL.

deeply, that the Colonization Society originated in hatred
to the free people of color.'** Shall we refuse then, the
testimony of this sufferer, shall we turn a deaf ear to
her experience, when she lifts her voice in the accents of
agony and warning, as to the true cause of the increase
of this soul-withering prejudice. In the bitterness of her
heart she exclaims, " O the guilt, the heavy load of guilt
that rests on the heads of colonizationists ! may God in
his mercy open their eyes before it be too late. We pity
while we fear them/^

But look at the pHnciples of our two Societies, and
judge for yourselves which of them would legitimately
produce the monster prejudice. On the banner of one is
written " the people of color must, in this country, remain

FOR AGES, PROBABLY FOREVER, A SEPARATE AND INFERIOR

CASTE, weighed down by causes powerful, universal, in~
evitable, which neither legislation nor Christianity can re-
move.'' On that of the other is inscribed in characters of
light, '* Human rights — prejudice vincible. 'Whatso-
ever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so
to them.' If y« hare respect to colors, ye commit sin,'*
Let th« swift witnoi* for truth in your own bosoms decide
the question.

But our colored sisters axe oppressed in other ways.
As they walk the streets of our cities, they are continu-
ally liable to be insulted with the vulgar epithet of *' nig-
ger;" no matter how respectable or wealthy, they cannot
visit the Zoological Institute of New-York except in the
capacity of nurses or servants — no matter how worthy,
they cannot gain admittance into or receive assistance
from any of the charities of this city. In Philadelphia,
they are cast out of our Widow's Asylum, and their chil-
dren are refused admittance to the House of Refuge, the
Orphan's House and the infant School connected with
the Aims-House, though into these are gathered the very
offscouring of our population. These are only specimens
of that soul-crushing influence from which the colored
women of the north are daily suftering. Then, again,

* In good keeping with this assertion wo would state that when the only official
agent they ever sont to England, was about to sail, a friend observed to hjm that he
had heard of his intended visit to England. "Ye-," said lie, " but I am nut /joair uut
of any love to tilt niggers." Would abolitionists have sent out such an agent:

APPEAL. 53

some of them have been robbed of their husbands and
children by the heartless kidnapper, and others have
themselves been dragged into slavery. If they attempt
to travel, they are exposed to great indignities and great
inconveniences. Instances have been known of their
actually dying in consequence of the exposui-e to which
they were subjected on board of our steamboats. No
money could purchase the use of a berth for a delicate
female because she had a colored skin. Prejudice, then,
degrades and fetters the minds, persecutes smd murders
the bodies of our free colored sisters. Shall we be silent
at such a time as this ? shall we say prejudice is an in-
nate feelin^r, implanted by God in our hearts .'* shall we
blaspheme His holy name by saying in other words that
He has taught us, yea caused us to hate our brother ?
Or shall we not rather arise in the moral strength of our
Avomanhood and our Christianity, and cast out this foul
demon from our hearts, our houses, and our churches,
in the name of the Lord of light and of love i

Xi THE SOUTH IS APPEALING TO THE NORTH.

The last reason we shall urge is the fact that the South
ts appealing to us for help in the overthrow of slavery.
From the " Appeal to Christian women of the South " we
learn that a lady in North Carolina made the following
remark about two years ago : *' Northerners know noth-
ingat all about slavery ; they think it is perpetual bond-
age only, but of the depth of degradation that word in-
volves they haVe ho conception ; if they had, ihey tconld
never cense their efforts until so horrible a system ivas over-
ihrown,^^ Here, then, is a strong appeal to JVorlherners
to put forth their unceasing energies to overthrow the sys-
tem of Southern oppression. Those women in the slave
States who are mourning over the abominations of the land,
feel that a spirit of reform on this subject can no more be
expected to originate among slaveholders than a tem-
perance reform or a moral reformation among those most
deeply involved in the sins of drunkenness and licentious-
ness. Their appeal is to the JVorth. Another lady from
the South, a slaveholder, who visited Philadelphia last

fall, remarked to an abolitionist that, until Northern wo-
5*

54 APPEAL.

men did their duty on this great subject, it could not be
expected that Southern women would do theirs. She ap-
peared surprised at the apathy of the free States when
she became acquainted with the extent to which they were
involved in the crime of slavery ; she had never thought
on these things before, and encouraged her friends, who
had enlisted in the Anti-Slavery cause, saying, if you ac-
complish your object, you will do a great work, and be a
blessing to our country. These appeals are from South-
ern women — shall we disregard them .''

We will now relate a circumstance that occurred to The-
odore D. Weld, when he was lecturing in Pittsburgh, Pa.
in 1835. At the close of one of his evening lectures, a
man sought him through the crowd, and extending his hand
to him through his friends, by whom he was surrounded, so-
licited him to step aside with him for a moment. After they
had retired by themselves to some corner of the house, says
the man, "I am a slaveholder from iNJary land — andijouare
right, the doctrine you advocate is the truth. ^^ "Why,
then," said the lecturer, "do you not emancipate your
slaves ?" " Because," replied the Mary lander, " J have
not religion enough to^' — he was a professed Christian —
" I have not sufficient moral courage to do so under the
existing state of public sentiment — I dare not subject
myself to the torrent of opposition which, from the pres-
ent state of public sentiment, would be poured upon me;
but do you abolitionists go on, and you will effect a
change in public sentiment which will render it possible
and easy for us to emancipate our slaves. I know," con-
tinued he, " a great many slaveholders in my State who
stand on precisely the same ground that I do in relation
to this matter. Only produce a correct public sentiment at
the JVorth, and the work is done; for all that keeps the South
in countenance while continuing this system, is the apology
and argument ajforded so generally by the JVorth ; only pro-
duce a right feeling in the JVorth generally, and ike South
cannot stand before it ; let the JVotth be- thoroughly convert-
ed, and the work is at once accomplished at the South. ^^
Another fact which may be adduced to prove that the
South is looking to the North for help, is the following :
At an Anti-Slavery concert of prayer for the oppressed,

APPEAL. 55

held in New-York city, in 1836, a gentleman arose in
the course of the meeting, declaring himself a Virginian j
and a slaveholder. He said he came to that city filled j
with the deepest prejudice against the abolitionists, by '
the reports given of their character in papers published
at the North. But he determined to investigate their
character and designs for himself He even boarded in the
family of an abolitionist, and attended the monthly concert
of prayer for the slaves and the slaveholders. And now,
as the result of his investigations and observations, he
was convinced that not only the spirit but the principles
and measures of the abolitionists ARE RIGHTEOUS.
He was now ready to emancipate his own slaves, and had
commenced advocating the doctrine of immediate eman-
cipation — "and here," said he, pointing to two men sit-
ting near him, " are the first fruits of my labors — these
two fellow Virginians and slaveholders are converts with
myself to abolitionism. And I know a thousand Virgin-
ians who need 'only to be made acquainted with the true
spirit and principles of abolitionists in order to their be-
coming converts as we are. Let the abolitionists go on in
the dissemination of their doctrines, and let the JVorthern
papers cease to misrepresent them at the South — let the true
li^ht of abolitionism be fully shed upon the Southern mind,
and the work of immediate and general emancipation will
be speedily accomplished.^^ — Morn. Star.
■ But a still more powerful appeal has been made to us.
Two of our Southern sisters who were once slaveholders,
have come up from the land of worse than Egyptian bond-
age, and besought us as women, as Americans, as Chris-
tians, to awake from the slumber of apathy, and to rise in
all the power of female influence, to the high and holy du-
ty of rebuking the sin of oppression at the South, and the
sin of prejudice at the North. Their testimony against
the abominations of slavery is fully laid before the public
— that testimony must be admitted, by every candid mind,
to be unexceptionable ; for what but a deep and solemn
sense of duty to the suffering slave could induce them to
throw themselves out so prominently as witnesses against
a system of which their nearest and dearest relatives are
now the advocates and practical supporters.^ They have

56 appeal;

declared to us that no one who has not been an integral
part of this system, can form any idea of the wreck of
temper and of morals which slavery produces. They
have told us that it is not for the slave alone that they plead,
but for the master and the mistress also — for the op-
pressor cannot wield the iron rod of his power without hav-
ing his conscience seared, his heart hardened, his moral
susceptibilities blunted, and his spiritual eye darkened.
They have been nursed in the arms, pillowed on the bo-
som and cradled on the lap of slavery. They have lived
from infancy up to womanhood behind that painted curtain
which hangs before the scenes of private life. They tell
us (and surely they ought to know whereof they affirm) that
the folds of this tapestry are too artfully and studiously dis-
posed by the hands of petty tyrants, to admit of the heed-
less glances of Northern visiters discovering the wretch-
edness and crime and cruelty which exists behind it.
Take one single instance as an illustration. A gentleman
of this city was in New-Orleans four years ago, at the lime
that the atrocious cruelties of Madame La Loirie were dis-
covered and her house torn down by the mob. He said
that only a few days previous to this circumstance, he had
dined with that — what shall we call her? not woman, that
were too noble a title — that slaveholder, and that he had
not the least suspicion of those deeds of darkness and of
death which were transacting even then in the garret and .
the cellar. The sunshine of Southern hospitality illumi-
nated her parlor with all the light of fashionable etiquette
and hollow-hearted politeness, and the sounding brass and
the tinkling symbol drowned the groan of the captive suf-
ferer and the stifled wail of the lacerated and dying slave
and the clank of his fetters and the moanings which told
how the iron had entered into his soul. He was the guest
of the mistress ; he sat in her parlor; he sat down to her
board — and what did he know ? How could he know of
those hidden works of darkness which she understood as
well how to conceal as how to perpetrate ^

These sisters tell us that the testimony of a Northern
woman, who, when she went to the South two years since,
made it her business to inquire into the real condition of
things, is correct. In a letter to a friend in Philadelphia,

APPEAL. 57

she says, " On coming South, we found that although we
had heard so much of slavery, the haJf, the worst half too,
had never been told us ; not that we have seen anything
of cruelty ourselves, though truly we have felt its deaden-
•ing influence, and the accounts we hear from every tongue
thai nobly dares to speak the truth, are deplorable indeed."
They are now in our free States, to which they were driven
by the cries of the sufferers they had no power to re-
lieve — they remonstrated and rebuked and entreated in
vain ; there was no spirit of reform there — no wish to de-
liver those who were drawn unto death — no ear open to
receive the truth — no heart to feel for the multiplied
wrongs of the outraged victim of oppression. They fled
to our Northern States, and their hearts beat high with the
expectation of mingling with spirits who could weep over
the down-trodden slave ; but did they find such spirits ?
did they meet with those who sympathized in his sorrows
and labored for his redemption? No! to their grifef and
amazement they found that the North was wrapped in pro-
found darkness and apathy ; the gushing fountain of feeling
was almost frozen, and th*y had well nigh despaired of the
bondm»B *?«r k#i«f r»lftA«W, •xcejit by the strong arm of
veng#aik£« in th» midst of the war-cry, the roar of the can-
non, and the exterminating judgments of an angry God.
A lowering cloud had gathered over the land of their birth
full of the judgments of God; and in awful suspense they
watched it, deepening and expanding as the oppressor
year after year treasured up for himself wrath against the
day of wrath and the righteous retribution of Heaven.
They had well nigh sunk down in utter hopelessness, as

their aching cjcs rested on the dark cloud that thickened

with gloomy portents and careered with thunderings, but a
star had already arisen in the east, though they knew it
not. They had heard some rumor of a fiery comet which
had glared on the sky, and thrown far and wide its wild
and fierce sweepings, threatening murder and war. Their
hearts trembled with fear, they turned away from the spec-
tacle, they refused to listen for a while ; but duty, sol-
emn duty, forced upon their minds the necessity of seeing
for themselves ; they seized the telescope of truth, they
scanned the frightful meteor, and what was their joy at

58 APPEAL.

finding that it was the star of hope, the harbinger of cer-
tain and speedy deliverance to those over whom they had
so often wept in secret places. And r\ovv, beloved sisters,
they have given themselves wholly to the cause of imme-
diate, unconditional, universal emancipation. They ask
our help — thy invite u« all to join battle with the foes of
freedom in this great moral contest — they beckon us on-
ward — shall we respon*!? or shall we stop our ears to the
cry of the poor sent tp to our Northern States through
their lips and their p«ns ?

HOW NORTHEkK mOMEN CAN HELP THE CAUSE OF

EMANCIPATIOX.

We come next to the second grand division of our sub-
ject : we are now to show you how Northern women can
help the cause of abolition. That we be not further tedious
unto you, we will endeavor to be concise. We would
answer, they can organize themselves into Anti-Slavery
Societies, and thus add to the number of those beaming
stars which are already pouring their cheering rays upon
the dreary pathway of the slave. Let tke Women of the
free States multiply these, until a perfect galaxy of light
and glory stretches over our Northern hemisphere. By
joining an Anti-Slavery Society we assuaie a responsibil-
ity — we pledg« ourselves to the cause — we openly avow
that we are on the side of th« down-trodden and the dumb
— we declare that slavery is a crime against God and
against man — and we swell the tide of that public opinion
which in a few years is to sweep from our land this vast
system of oppression and robbery and licentiousness and

heathenism. But be not satisfied with merely setting
your names to a constitution — this is a very little thing :
read on the subject — none of us have yet learned half the
abominations of slavery. We wish that every Northern
woman could read "Stroud's Sketch of the Slave Laws;"
they are as a code worthy of the remark made by Summers
of Virginia, when speaking of the laws of that State alone.
*' How will the provisions of our slave code be viewed in
after time ? I fear some learned antiquary may use them
.as a portion of his evidence to prove the barbai-ism of the
present enlightened and Christian era ; I fear lest he may

APPEAL. 59

not understand the necessity which with us justifies our
attempt to annihilate the mind of a portion of our race."
How monstrous must be those statutes which seek the
annihilation of the immortal mind of man ! how tremen-
dous the crime !

Anti-Slavery publications abound ; and no intelligent
woman ought to be ignorant of this great subject — no Chris-
tian woman can escape the obligation now resting upon her,
to examine it for herself. If Anti-Slavery principles and
efforts are right, she is bound to embrace and to aid them;
if they are wrong, as the vestal virgins of her country's
honor and safety, and the church's puriiy and faith, she is
bound to oppose them, to crush them if she can. Read,
then, beloved sisters ; and as many of you as are able,
subscribe for one or more Anti-Slavery papers or periodi-
cals, and exert your influence to induce your friends to
do the same ; and when memory has been stored with
interesting facts, lock them not up in her store-house, but
tell them from house to house, and strive to awaken inter-
est and sympathy and action in others, who, like Galleo
of old, "care for none of these things." The seeds of
knowledge must be sown broad-cast over our land — light
must be increased a thousand-fold— :• and woman ought to
be in this field : it is her duty, her privilege to labor in it
'* as woman never yet has labored."

By spreading correct information on the subject of
slavery, you will prepare, the way for the circulation of
numerous petitions, both to the ecclesiastical and civil
authorities of the nation. Presbyterians ought to petition
their Presbyteries and Synods and the General Assembly.
Baptists ought to petition their Annual and the Triennial
Conventions. Protestant Episcopalians their Conven-
tions, and Methodists their Annual and General Con-
ferences: beseeching and entreating that they would ban-
ish slavery from the communion table and the pulpit, and
rebuke iron-hearted prejudice from our places of worship.
Such memorials must ultimately produce the desiredeflect.
. Every ivoman, of every, denomination, whatever may be
her color or her creed, ought to sign a petition to Congress
for the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade in the dis-
trict of Columbia, slavery in Florida, and the inter-state

60 APPEAL.

slave traffic. Seven thousands of our brethren and sisterg
are now languishing in the chains of servitude in the cap-
ital of this republican despotism : their hands are stretched
out to MS for help; they have heard what the women of
England did for the slaves of the West-Indies — 800,000
women signed the petition which broke the fetters of
800,000 slaves; and when there are as many signatures
to the memorials sent up by the women of the Umted
States to Congress as there are slaves in our country,
oh! then will the prison-doors of the South be opened
by the earthquake of public opinion.

We believe you may also help this cause by refraining
from the use of slave-grown products. Wives and moth-
ers, sisters and daughters, can exert a very extensive
influence in providing for the wants of a family ; and
those women whose fortunes have been accumulated by
their husbands and fathers out of the manufacture and
merchandize of such produce, ought to consider them-
selves deeply indebted to the slave, and be peculiarly
anxious to bear a testimony against such participation in
the gains of oppression, as well as to aid by liberal dona-
tions in spreading Anti-Slavery principles.

Much may be done, too, by sympathizing with our op-
pressed colored sisters, who are suffering in our very
midst. Extend to them the right hand of fellowship on the
broad principles of humanity and Christianity, treat them
as equals, visit them as equals, invite them to co-operate
with you in Anti-Slavery and Temperance and Moral
Reform Societies — in Maternal Associations and Prayer
Meetings and Reading Companies. If you regard them
as your inferiors, then remember tbe apostolic injunction
to " condescend to men of low estate:" here is a precious
opportunity ; and if it is improved, dear sisters, we feel
assured you will find your own souls watered and re-
freshed whilst you are watering others. Opportunities
frequently occur in travelling, and in other public situa-
tions, when your countenance, your influence, and your
hand might shield a sister from contempt and insult, aiid
procure for her comfortable accommodations. Tjien
again you can do a great deal towards the elevation of
our free colored population, by visiting their day-schools,

APPEAL. 61

and Ite aching in their Sabbath and evening schools, and
shedding over them the smile of your approbation, and
aiding them with pecuniary contributions. Go to their
places of worship; or, if you attend others, sit not down
in the highest seats, among the white aristocracy, but go
down to the despised colored woman's pew, and sit side
by side with her. Multitudes of instances will continu-
ally occur in which you will have the opportunity of ic/t-n-
iifying yourselves with this injured class of our fellow-
beings : embrace these opportunities at all times and in
ail places, in the true nobility of our great Exemplar, who
was ever found among the poor and the despised, elevatino-
and blessing them with his counsels and presence. In
this way, and this alone, will you be enabled to subdue
that deep-rooted prejudice which is doing the work of
oppression in the free States to a most dreadful extent.

When this demon ha-s been cast out of your own hearts,
when you can recognize the colored woman as a woman
— then will you be prepared to send out an appeal to our
Southern sisters, entreating them to * ' go and do likewise. "
The South has been addressed by a Southern woman —
she is doubtless expecting, perhaps waiting, for an appeal
from her Northern sisters. Wh-en will Northern women
be ready to make such an appeal t Can tliey be ready
befoi^e they have fulfilled their duties to the colored people
around their own doors ^ A Southern woman, a slave-
holder, who visited the North last summer, remarked, she
was astonished to find that prejudice against color was so
strong and malignant — yes, she was indignant. How,
then, would an address on behalf of the slave from Ao>//i-
e^m women appeal to the hearts of such a Southerner .''
Could she believe its sincerity.'' or would she not rather
turn and say. Go, break the cord of caste i-n the Wee
States, and then come and persuade us to break the yoke
of bondage here. Go back to the North, and liit the
colored woman from her low estate there, and then come
and talk to us about the slavery of the colored woman
here. Go, pluck the beam out of your own eye first, and
then will you see clearly how to pull the mote from ours.
Go, "physician, heal thyself." Go, and when you have
performed your duties, then, aided by that correct public
6

62. APPEAL.

sentiment which you shall have created at the North —
then we will do our duties at the South.

We solemnly believe that the North can labor effectu-
ally with the South only so far as she overcomes her
deadly hatred to the free colored man. Prejudice, dear
sisters, is that Achan in the camp of abolitionists which
must be brought out and stoned before all the people ^ before
we ever can successfully storm the citadel of slavery, or
even its out-works. Look, then, at the tremendous re-
sponsibility resting on us at the North. If we do not
abandon this cherished sin, tue must inevitably become
individually guilty of keeping our brethren and sisters at
the South in bondage, just as the Israelites would have
been individually guilty of producing the continued defeat
of the army at Ai, if they had refused to surrender Achan
to the exterminating sentence of the law.

And since we have set befoi'e our white sisters of the
North their duties to our sisters of color, so now we would
tenderly solicit their indulgence whilst we throw out some
suggestions to them. You, beloved sisters, have impor-
tant duties to perform at this crisis, duties no less dignified
and far more delicate and difficult. You daily feel the
sorrowful effects of the prejudice which is exercised to-
wards those peculiarities of form with which our heavenly
Father has stamped you. It is your allotment to bear the
cruel scorn and aversion in a thousand different ways.
Your hearts often bleed at the heedless expression and
studied avoidance — your spirits are often cast down under
the glance of contempt and the smile of heartless cour-
tesy, and you feel afraid to come into our presence Unless
assured that we can greet you as human beings, as wo-
men, as sisters; and often, perhaps, when duty calls you
into associations with us, you shrink back and refuse to
come, lest haply some among us may be too delicate to
sit beside you, too fastidious to bear the contact. We
know such things must be mortifying, and hard, very
hard to endure, especially from your professedfHends; but
we entreat you to " bear with us a little in our folly,'' for
we have so long indulged this prejudice, that some of us
find it exeedingty difficult to divest our minds of it. We
fully believe that it is not a plant of our Father's planting.

APPEAL. 6$

we are striving to root it up ; have patience then with us
ivhilst the struggle continues, and when it is over we shall
be able to labor more effectually than ever for you. You
must be willing to mingle with us whilst we have the pre-
judice, because it is only by associating with you that we
shall ever be able to overcome it. You must not avoid
our society whilst we are in this transition state. "And
indeed bear with us " for our own sakes ; as women, as
Christians, we are ashamed of our folly and sin, and we
entreat your aid to help us to overcome and abandon it.
We know that we have not the same mind in us which
was in Christ Jesus, and you can confer no greater favor
upon us than in thus for a season ''bearing all things, be-
lieving all things, hoping all things, enduring all things."
Put on, therefore, towards us, your weak and erring sis-
ters, that charity which is the bond of perfectness, that
charity which never faileth. We crave your sympathy
and prayers: we deeply feel our need of them.

But there is one thing which above all others we be-
seech you to do for this glorious cause. Pray for it. Pray
without ceasing ; for unless all your efforts are baptized
with prayer, they can never return into your own bosoms
with the blessing of Heaven, they can never effectually
help forward this work. We have no confidence in effort
witlwut prayer, and no confidence in prayer without effort.
We believe them as inseparably connected as are faith and
works. And if any woman tell us that she prays but can-
not labor for the slave, we must reply to her in the lan-
guage of James, in reference to faith and works — show
me prayers without effort, and we will show thee our pray-
ers by our efforts. Yes! sisters — we want you to be per-
suaded of this, because we are assured that an utter fal-
lacy passes among us for sound doctrine. There is noth-
ing more common than to hear such expressions as these
from the lips of men and women who are doing nothing
to set the bondman free, we are as much Anti-Slavery as
you, we abhor slavery as much as any one possibly can.
Away with such hypocritical pretensions to sympathy !
It is just that kind of sympathy which says to the naked
and hungry, ** Depart in peace, be you warmed and
filled, notwithstanding ye give them not those things

64 APPEAL.

which are needful to the body." Well may ive exclaim
with. the Apostle " what doth it profit ?"' We believe in no
such Anti-Slavery principles, for full well do we hioiv that
our principles possess a life and power which must prompt
to action a spirit which will live in our life and breathe in
our words.

Ah ! but we are told -r- the measures, the measures we
cannot unite with. What is the matter with the measures.''
Why,^ there is such a daring of public opinion— such a de-
termination to carry on this work in spite of opposition
when you see that the public are not prepared lor it —
when you know that they have so often produced mobs.

And how, we would ask, is the public to be prepared
for the reception of these great doctrines ? By throwing
a bushel over the candle of truth, because the organs of
spiritual vision are pained by its radiance in consequence
of the moral darkness in which they have so long been
involved ? — or, by still continuing to hold forth the word of
life until the eye gradually becomes accustomed to the
light, and at last receives it without pain. What did our
Lord mean by calling his disciples the light of the ivorld,
and by commanding them to Id their lights so shine before
men, that they might see their good works. Did he mean
they must cease to preach the truth as soon as wicked and
deceitful men opposed the truth, and blasphemed it ? Let us
learn his meaning from his actions, for He embodied all
his principles in his glorious life. He did not speak or
profess one thing while He acted another. Let us then
trace the history of Jesus — Jet us see whether he propa-
gated doctrines obnoxious to public opinion, adverse to the
views of the dignitaries of Church and of State, and
whether, when he was traduced and opposed, he bowed
to popular tunuilt and clamor, or stood erect, uprearing
the liglit of truth in the tempest of passion which howled
around him.

EXAMPLE. OF JESUS AND HIS APOSTLES.

In early childhood his life was sought by Herod, and
during all his sojourn in the flesh, "he was a man of sor-
rows and acquainted with grief," beset by cruel enemies,
who went about to kill him. Sometimes the Jews were

APPEAL. 65

SO incensed, that they took up stones to cast at him because
*'they perceived that he spake his parables against them."
At one time "they thrust him out of the city (of Naza-
reth) and led him to the brow of the hill that they might cast
him down headlong, but he passing through the midst of
them went his way. " At last a great mob, armed with swords
and with staves, came out to take him ; and after being
betrayed by one of his own disciples, and mocked and
scourged by his enemies, he was put to death, although "He
did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth." Judea
was in a ferment, and the hearts of th« people were
moved as the trees of the wood by the sweeping blast.
But did all this opposition silence the tongue of jffm,
who " spake as never man spake .''" No! he went about
from city to city, and from village to village, here in the
synagogue and there by the sea-shore, and then again in
Peter's ship as it floated on Genezareth, everywhere
preaching those very truths ivhich excited to wrath the un-
believing Jews.

But from the example of him who was "God manifest
in the flesh," let us turn to those who were "men of like
passions with ourselves." Was Stephen deterred from
proclaiming the truth because "the Jews stirred up the
people and elders and the scribes and came upon him
and brought him to the council, and set up false witnesses
against him .?" No! he seized upon this very opportunity
to trace their history from the call of Abraham, and to
prove by recorded facts, that they had " always resisted
the Holy Ghost," as their fathers did, so also had they
done, in being the betrayers and murderers of that Just
One, whose coming their own prophets had foretold. And
what were the consequences? Did the Spirit and the pow-
er by which he spake convince them ? No! they were
cut to the heart, and gnashed upon him with their teeth;
and even whilst he was full of the Holy Ghost, "they
cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and
ran upon him with one accord, and cast him out of the city,
and stoned him. " He died by the hands of a lawless mob.
And what effect did this violent opposition produce on the
Apostles ^ Did they withhold the truth because the peo-
ple were unwilling to hear it ? or did they fearlessly and
6*

66 APPEAL..

perseveringly "dare public opinion," by their obnoxiou9
doctrines ? Let the conduct of Peter and John answer
this query.

And how did the great Apostle of the Gentiles bear him-
self? Was he deterred from his. work by what he had
witi?'essed at the stoning of Stephen ? And when convert-
ed to that faith which he once destroyed, was he satis-
fied with merely ceasing to do evil, or did he also go about
preaching that gospel which was to the Jews a stumbling-
block, and to the Greeks foolishness ? After the scales
fell from his eyes, " straightway he preached Christ in
the synagogue — that. he is the Son of God;" and when by
the power of his arguments, he confounded the Jews that
dwelt at. Damascus, and they took counsel to slay him, he
w as let down by night in a basket from the wall, and fled
to Arabia. We afterwards lind him in Jerusalem, where
he preached until " the Grecians went about to slay him,'-*
when he was sent to Arabia. At Antioch he preached
the humiliating doctrine that through the very man Christ
Jesus, who had been condemned and executed as a male-
factor, the Jews must obtain forgiveness of sins, and be
justified from all things from which they could not be justi-
ged by the law of Mos.es. This roused their malice and
envy, so that they contradicted and blasphemed, and spake
against those things which were spoken by Paul ; and
even succeeded in stirring up the people and the devout
and honoruhle women, and raised persecution against Paul
and Barnabas and expelled them out of their coasts.

At Iconium they preached with such power that a great
multitude, both of the Jews and also of the Greeks, be-
lieved; yet still the unbelieving Jews stirred up the peo-
ple, and made their minds evil-atfected towards the breth-
ren; and when an assault was made, both by the people
and their rulers, to use them despitefully, and to stone
them, they fled into Lystra. Here,^ too, Paul was beset
by a mob and stoned, and drawn out of the. city and left
as dead. Did all these persecutions prevent him from
promulgating the truths of tiie gospel ? No ! In labors
he. was more abundant than any of the Apostles, and his
zeal was equalled only by the virulence with which he
was opposed everywhere. We next find him at Thessa-

APPEAL. 67

lonica, where the Jews set all the city in an uproar, and
assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring the
Apostles out to the people, but they fled to Berea, where
it is stated " they received the word with all readiness
of mind and searched the Scriptures daily to know whether
these things tvcre so:^^ the consequence of which was, that
honorable women here believed the very truths which the de-
vout and honorable women of Antioch rejected, through
ignorance and prejudice, having sulTered themselves to
become dupes of those malignant Jews who stirred up
the people against the Apostles.

OPPOSITION TO TRUTH SHOULD NOT SILENCE ITS AD-
VOCATES.

It is no neic. thing for the truth to be opposed by vio-
lence, and its promulgators mobbed from city to city.
And if Paul felt it his duty to persevere in preaching it
riotsvithstanding the uproars, confusion and insurrections
whicii were raised to ;Crush jt, we can see no reason why
abolitionists should cease their efforts on behalf of the
suffering. slave, because mobs are raised against them in
New-York, Boston, Utica and Cincinnati, If. (as some
have asserted) abolitionists raised these mobs, then with
equal truth it may be said that Paul and Barnabas raised
those of Antioch, Lystra, Ephesus and Jerusalem. In
view of these facts, what is the. duty of the friend of the
slave ? We answer unhesitatingly, to go on fearlessly,
uncompromisingly and pacifically to preach the truth and
nothing but the truth, in the whole length and breadth of
our land. Those who raise these mobs are responsible
for that spirit of anarchy and violence which they are
producing, and not those who are the innocent victims of
such outrages.

In the lives of Jesus and his Apostles, do we find our
warrant for breasting the furious waves of public opinion,
for keeping our ranks in righteousness unbroken, and for
steadily holding up the unflickering flame of truth, in the .
midrit of a crooked and perverse generation. And we
must believe that if there were any real principle, any liv-
ing sympathy in the hearts of those who are " as much
Anti-Slavery as we are," and yet condemn our measuresj

68 APPEAL.

that instead of doing nothing they would devise measures
of their own, and if their measures were the right meas-
ures doubtless they would prevail and we should be
driven from the field. If we do wrong, it is no excuse for
their doing nothing at S8ch an awful crisis as the present.

MINISTERIAL ADVOCATES OF SLAVERY.

The abolitionists have stood by that altar which avarice
and lust of power have consecrated to the demon of sla-
very, and they have solemnly protested that the priests
who offered human sacrifices upon her shrine, would them-
selves be doomed by the indignant voice of coming gene-
rations. The Jeroboams of the South and the North
have put forth their hands from that altar, saying, " lay
hold on them," but their hands, like that of the presump-
tuous monarch of Israel, have withered in the impious at-
tempt to close the lips of those who have been raised up
in this *' hypocritical nation " to *' show the people their
transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins." Yes!
those ministers of the gospel who defend slavery from
the Bible are the priests of this bloody Moloch, and as
the light of day makes manifest the pollutions which
cover objects around us, so will the light of truth reveal
the corruption of those professed ministers of Christ, who
have blasphemed the name of our God by affixing the
counterfeit seal of his approbation to the abominations of
this system of moral, mental night and ruin. For the
bold utterance of the truth, and delivering the message
to the people which was entrusted to them, they have been
traduced. and persecuted even unto strange cities.

IT IS THE PROVINCE OF WOMAN TO LABOR IN THIS

CAUSE.

If our brethren, then, have suffered and dared so much
in the cause of bleeding humanity, shall we not stand side
by side with them in the bloodless contest ? Is it true
that the women of France often follow their husbands and
their brothers to the sanguinary contest, putting on the
soldier's armor, and facing the fierceness of war's grim
visaue of death .'' And shall American women refuse to
follow their husbands, fathers and brothers into the wide

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APPEAL. 69

field of moral enterprise and holy aggressive conflict with
the master sin of the American republic, and the American
church ? Oh, no! we know the hearts of our sisters too
well — we see them already girding on the whole armor
of God, already gathering in the plain and on the moun-
tain, in the crowded cities of our seaboard, and the little
villas and hamlets of the country ; we see them cheering
with their smiles and strengthening with their prayers
and aiding with their efforts that noble band of patriots,
philanthropists and Christians, who have come up to the
help of the Lord against the mighty. We see them
meekly bowing to the obloquy and uncovering their heads
to the curses which are heaped by Southern slaveholders
upon all who remember those who are in bonds. Woman
is now rising in her womanhood, to throw from her, with
one hand the paltry privileges with which man has invested
her, of conquering by fashionable charms and winning by
personal attractions, whilst with the other she grasps the
right of woman to unite in holy copartnership with man,
in the renovation of a fallen world. She tramples these
glittering baubles in the dust, and takes from the hand of
her. Creator, the Magna Charta of her high prerogatives
as a moral, an intelleciual, an accountable being — a,iyo-
man, who, though placed in subjection to the monarch of
the world, is still the crown and "the glory of the man."

When Jehovah was about to erect in the wilderness of
Sinai a tabernacle in which he was to walk amidst his
chosen people, was it built by the contributions and the
labors of man only ? Did not woman lend her aid to the
holy work? What saith the Scripture? "The chil-
dren of Israel brought a willing offering unto the Lord,
every man and every tooman whose heart made them
willing to bring for all manner of work, which the Lord
had comBianded to be made by the hand of Moses."
And if Bezaleel and Aholiab were "filled with wisdom
of heart to work all manner of work, so also the women
that were wise-hearted, and did spin with their hands,
and brought that which they had spun, both of purple
and of blue and of scarlet and of fine linen."

Woman, as well as man, put forth her energy and in-
genuity in preparing materials for the building of the tab-

70 APPEAL.

ernacle. She labored unitedly with him, and shared with
him the toils and the honors of bringing willing offerings
to the tabernacle of the congregation of the Lord. And
v/hen our fathers pitched the tabernacle of freedom in this
western wilderness, did not woman cheer them onward in
the privations and sufferings they were called to endure ?
They well knew that the government they erected could
not be permanent: it was like the tabernacle of Sinai, set
up in the midst of thunderings and lightnings, and a thick
cloud, and the voice of the trumpet waxing louder and
louder.

But we live, beloved sisters, in a very different era.
The Lord has raised up men whom he has endowed with
*' wisdom and understanding and knowledge" to lay deep
and broad the foundations of the temple of liberty. This
is a great moral work in which they are engaged. No
war-trumpet summons to the field of battle, but wisdom
crieth without: "she uttereth her voice in the streets" —
*' whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring an offer-
ing." Shall woman refuse her response to the call .'* or,
will she not rather surrender herself to the work, and
throw the sympathies of her heart and the gems of her
intellect into the treasury of this temple ? Was she
originally created to be a help meet for man — his sorrows
to divide, his joys to share and all his toils to lighten by
ber willing aid ? and shall she refuse to aid him with her
prayers, her labors, and her counsels, too, at such a time^
in such a cause as this ?

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